2mo ago

In Brazil, the free and instant mobile payment system Pix challenges US dominance

www.lemonde.fr

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Davriellelouna @lemmy.world

2mo ago

In Brazil, the free and instant mobile payment system Pix challenges US dominance

www.lemonde.fr /en/economy/article/2025/07/30/in-brazil-the-free-and-instant-mobile-payment-system-pix-challenges-us-dominance_6743880_19.html

4 comments

Excellent 🫱🫲
Presto essentially had that sort of potential in Ontario, if it just expanded beyond being a transit card.
There are lots of such examples outside of NA. In Japan, their transit cards can be used in lots of convenience stores, vending machines, and even claw machines. In Malaysia, the old highway toll debit card called TouchNGo can now be used essentially anywhere where the vendor pastes their QR code.
- Being managed by the central bank is a major advantage though. All banks immediately adopted it, and all financial institutions were in on it pretty quickly. In a matter of 5 years it went from “what’s that?” to a guarantee. Brazil is one of the very few places I’ve been where it’s totally practical to never carry a wallet and pix is a major part of it.
  
  No doubt about it. And I’m actually glad to read that is, and that there are banks who are happy to just hop on something that they didn’t make themselves, and don’t necessarily have control over, which many banks around the world are very keen to do as, well, most major banks are extremely conservative (small c of course) organizations, all over the world.
  In Japan, afaik, none of em have really worked with any of the transit cards in any meaningful way, despite us actually seeing some of these cards becoming more and more universal, ie their systems are becoming more predominant than what the Japanese banks use (can’t remember the name right now). That said, Japan is still a mostly cash-reliant country, esp the older shops, many of which just don’t care about adopting technology.
  In Malaysia, one of their major banks have instead tried to mimic what TouchNGo does, allowing people to transfer money via scanning a QR code, and essentially use their status as a major bank to sort of compete with the original toll card. Some other players (non-banks tho) have sort of just joined in the bandwagon and so you end up seeing some shops ending up with a bunch of different QR codes plastered on their counters. Despite the fragmentation, because QR codes are just super easy for even a small roadside stall to set up, it’s actually gotten really good adoption even in smaller, near rural places. Carrying cash is still a good recommendation, but you really just need a few bills of different denominations (there are only a handful), and can generally go without using cash.