Comment by vitorbaptistaa
4 hours ago
> To be able to pay with Pix, one needs to get a CPF (Brazilian Tax ID).
It's not ideal, but you can use Wise to pay using Pix and India's UPI. You simply transfer the money from your local bank account to Wise and they transfer to whatever Pix you tell. It's almost instant.
Meanwhile, there are talks about integrating these systems. This is the obvious long-term game, a clear threat to Visa and MasterCard.
Right now in Brazil the only advantages of using a regular credit card are the cashbacks and convenience to use contactless. The convenience is going away -- Pix now supports contactless payment, but it's not widely accepted yet.
Another advantage is anti-fraud measures and remedy (chargebacks). This (BTW clearly AI-generated) article mentions some fraud thing they're working on (Special Refund Mechanism), so we'll see how long it takes for that to take effect.
For now, I'll be using our Canadian not-quite-Pix called Interac to pay small amounts of money to people I trust, but I won't any time soon be buying a fridge with it, or booking a week-long cottage stay on a website I've never used before.
Canadian here who's not familiar with Pix; is Interac a pretty close comparable? If so, it's not the end-all answer for exchanging money for goods & services, but great in a small subset of transactions.
Wise remains one of the worst professional support experiences I've ever had at my company and would highly advise people not to use them.
In contrast, I had great support the one time I contacted them. Have used them in business and personally across a number of different accounts with no problems.
What is a better alternative in your experience?