I remember testing popcorn time and other bittorrent streaming tools back in the days. They worked "OK". Yes, you don't get the netflix experience. But on popular titles you get "good enough" streaming experience. You have to wait like 30 secs to get started.
>> require ID, zero privacy, usually government sanctioned
> Unfortunately systems that don't have those requirements are going to be money laundering channels. I wish it wasn't such a big concern but it's unavoidable.
There same requirements also make the likelihood of these systems scaling beyong one jurisdiction very unlikely. Tourists don't want to set up a payment account for every country they visit. Or other way around, banks don't want to KYC and set up an account for every foreign tourist.
As Visa and MC work globally, I'm betting that the dominance from those will continue. Cryptocurrencies might have some change of becoming the "global" transaction method as well.
A state of mutual trust can be established, similar to driver’s licenses and passports: country A trusts you, they did all the legwork, we certify their endorsement, you’re fine. It won’t necessarily be possible between all pairs, but, SEPA and Interac should be theoretically interoperable; dozens of other friendly-country pairs can be thought of.
> As Visa and MC work globally, I'm betting that the dominance from those will continue.
China, India, Brazil, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and others are all trying to expand their own transaction networks.
While it's still piecemeal, a Chinese or Indian tourist in Thailand can use UnionPay or UPI to transact without using Visa/Mastercard, a Russian tourist in Vietnam can use Mir, a Brazilian in Argentina can use Pix instead of Visa/MC as well, and a Japanese visitor in Singapore can use JCB instead.
Even the ECB has recently started considering this option (though it might also be an attempt to force the Trump admin to negotiate).
The biggest thing blocking international payment competitors is FATF, which has some regulations biased in favor of Visa/Mastercard.
> Cryptocurrencies might have some change of becoming the "global" transaction method as well
I'm not sure. Most jurisdictions that aren't the US and EU heavily regulate cryptocurrencies, and at best allow state managed or regulated cryptocurrencies, which basically makes the whole point of crypto moot.
Yep! And Napas247 was co-developed by Vietnam and South Korea (edit: Only VN - confused Shinhan's support for development work)!
The point is there is a steady decoupling towards non-Visa/MC payment systems outside the US and EU, and it wouldn't be too surprising if a number of these systems begin supporting inter-operability within the next 10 years.
Yes. As soon as June, Brazilian pix will support "Automatic Pix". Which means, basically, Pix will support subscriptions. So let's say, you authorize Netflix with pix, and then every month they will charge you with Pix automatically.
I find very likely Netflix or Amazon will be one of the first companies to support this in June now.
This was made initially to replace old school automatic debit for phone/electricity/etc bills, but it will support all services.
In Brazil, installments with credit cards are also super common... Basically when you put a credit card on any website or buy on a store, you can just choose to pay in 12x.
Well, they will add in September Pix Installments as well.
Intruiging (in a great way). Do you have any recommendations of any Brazilian sources (Portuguese em Ingles) about the Brazilian and MERCOSUR FinTech and Public Tech industry? I'd love to dig even deeper, but my background is more NAM and Indo-Pac driven. I passed on NuBank eons ago and don't want to make the same mistake again.
> Brazil, installments with credit cards are also super common... Basically when you put a credit card on any website or buy on a store, you can just choose to pay in 12x
Yea that kinda makes sense. The market dynamics in Brazil reminds me a lot of India albeit better regulated (thank you OECD reforms), but tbf, there has been a lot of cross-pollination between Brazilian and Indian policymakers - Cambridge MA is that kinda melting pot, and Brazil has a very similar political dynamic.
Not sure if there's an english website about it, but in Portuguese quality content you can find without paywall I would say is NeoFeed https://neofeed.com.br/
Oh yeah, I think lots of QR code based systems in Asia are actually interoperable now (just not if you’re not a resident in any of these countries — e.g. I do have GCash, but my account works in Philippines only).
You can absolutely not use Pix in Argentina. Maybe some street performer will, but most places barely accept cards, let alone pix. Cash is still king there.
Where? Pretty much every place accepts Mercadopago at least in Buenos Aires and PBA. From big stores to smaller ones to street performers or small shops in the middle of the road.
- technically not a specific app, its a payment method that any app with a checkout flow (for example) can chose to implement.
- you register some id with your financial institution of choice (any of CPF - equivalent to SSN, CNPJ - for businesses, phone number, email or a randomly generated key).
- keys are fully portable, as in you can revoke em or change the bank institution they're associated with any time.
- you can generate a QR code on the spot so the person paying can just scan it
- transfer is pretty much instant (under 5s seems to be the norm)
- no NFC (so works with any crappy phone)
- since its a bank transfer, and since bank transfers are insured up to 200k (afaik), its pretty safe.
Brazilian banking system is quite well developed for a long time. Let's see if Pix being ubiquitous can help the country better develop economically, with better wealth distribution, innovation and high-paying jobs
That's something I've wondered for a long time. Especially know when real time bank transfers aren't allowed to cost more than regular bank transfers (usually free), there's really no point in creating a seperate system.
But it seems to me like banks don't really want to make bank transfers more comfortable for small transactions.
Pix is basically a commercial name for two services:
- SPI: responsible for the payments
- DICT: responsible for mapping keys to accounts
The API documentation of those services are available, but only banks can use them. When a person wants to send money to another, there's an option in the bank app for sending through Pix.
Then you have many options to define to whom you'll send that money:
- typing the bank account information
- using the Pix key (which can be an phone, email, CPF/CNPJ (brazillian documents) or a generated key)
- scanning a QR code
Note that the two latter options don't require the account information. That resolution is done by DICT.
After that, you type how much you'll send (sometimes the QR code already contains this information). Then it'll send through SPI.
This sounds really cool. Is there a verification step where you confirm that the right number or identifier was entered for the first payment to someone? That's always one of my biggest concerns and I don't want to enter a number twice as the verification.
The UX is standardized by the Central Bank and they mandate a step showing the name of the person/company associated with that Pix key before you make the payment. So you can always double-check.
Does the format for the ID have a check digit in it? Like IBANs and credit card numbers can both be checked offline by an algorithm to tell you that you've made a typo.
From my reading, the system seems like it's intended to be used with a connected device and scanned/copypasted rather than typed or read over the phone.
You can see how it works in this video, after 3:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvz0Yiss4Go. It's in portuguese, but I think you will understand how the interface works.
Note that it is from a bank app (Nubank), Pix itself is not an app. Other banks have similar interfaces
You use your bank's phone app. You can scan a QR code or you can send money to someone if you know their "id string", like a phone number, an email or a random string of numbers - you choose the "id string" format you want, and you can have different "ids" linked to different bank accounts. There are no physical cards.
assuming that the typo didn't lead to an invalid/unregistered key, you will see the recipient's bank, full name and masked CPF number in the confirmation screen.
I really dislike the lack of a more anonymous way to transfer money but given how prevalent scams are here I feel like there was no better option.
Also, before PIX bank transfers required a person's full name, full CPF number, full account and branch numbers so arguably PIX is helping to improve privacy a little bit.
However the big issue is when people register their phone numbers as PIX keys because it means strangers can easily get full names from phone numbers.
It helps to prevent scams because you know who the money is going to (not foolproof, of course).
CPF in Brazil is not as fragile or sensitive as the SSN in the US. You can't easily wreck someone's life just because you know their name and CPF. CPF numbers are shared pretty much everywhere since it's a unique identification code for a single person. All businesses ask for it when they're generating invoices/receipts etc. You basically use your CPF everywhere and there's virtually no risk in sharing it.
That's not to say that identity theft is not a thing in Brazil. It definitely is, however the damage is usually not as bad as the stories you hear in the US and the blame is usually put on the banks / service providers for not doing the proper KYC to verify the documents. It'll be a headache for the person, but usually something that is quickly fixed.
You can have several unique keys, a few are unique to the whole system (like your phone number, Physical Persons Register (CPF)), but you can have several randomly generated per bank. Usually you tell someone your phone number, otherwise the random generated string is a big string, and you actually show them a QR code so they can transfer to your account, and vice-versa.
It's a functionality of banking apps. Yes, transfers are done either via a QR code or via one or more "Pix Keys", that the person/bussiness authorizes in their baking app. These keys can be the brazilian equivalent of your SSN, a cell phone number, an e-mail address or a randomly generated UUID-formated one.
I used Alipay (which is an Android application where you add a debit or credit card) for absolutely everything when I was there in October of last year. Sure seemed like everyone else was using it too.
Except for Hong Kong, they have their own thing. I just used Google pay there.
I would imagine exchanges these days routinely monitor incoming and outgoing transactions, and if they suspect the funds are stolen, they are freezed. I would imagine North Korea doesn't have really an easy job laundering that BTC they have stolen.
They are simply having to duplicate all the things Visa provides its customers.
BTC is inherently deflationary in the sense that once new coins cease to be mined the total number of BTC will decrease over time due to lose, theft and death. I know that I lost my wallet with the only BTC I owned 10 years ago. I can name several other people that have done the same. I would think this one property makes it undesirable for use as a currency.
> I know that I lost my wallet with the only BTC I owned 10 years ago. I can name several other people that have done the same. I would think this one property makes it undesirable for use as a currency.
How is this any different from losing your wallet with physical currency?
In many cases if you lose your physical wallet, someone else will find it and the cash will stay in circulation, but even if not, as physical currency is much more inflationary it's no big deal.
The second point is that most people keep a lot less money in a physical wallet, usually no more than say a few hundred dollars. Whereas a bitcoin wallet will often contain thousands or more so is more akin to a bank account.
Exactly. I look at things like this and contrast with what friends like Adam Johnson do[0] with their community contributions. Adam has many Django packages, along with many other non-Django Python packages. Crucially though, they're not forks that reduce the focus of the community, they're contributions that increase what the community can do collectively.
I think it's perfectly fine to have split effort when you have differing views and goals on something. Developing two exact same things with same goal and purpose might not be fruitful, but variety and options don't usually hurt
So... I started scimming through the artcle, and they basically convert the money to cryptocurrency? Don't know if the article really contained anything other interesting details.
The interesting bits are before that happens. You need money mules, you need brokers to find the mules for you, you need escrow companies to stop the brokers from running away with your money, etc.
So much work. makes me wonder why not just earn it legit. It's like cheaters in school who use AI software and other tools. It would be less work to just study. I guess it does work or esle it the scams would not persist.
> So much work. makes me wonder why not just earn it legit.
Because they make orders of magnitude more money than they otherwise would. The regional drug lord wouldn't be the next fortune 500 CEO if only he chose to not break the law.
Not sure if I fully agree on that. Using AI as a tool can usually reduce the total time it takes to complete an assignment or project by like 50%, not to mention it also reduces the amount of time spent pulling your hair out feeling stuck by like 80-90%. Of course, you lose out on most of the learning experience but it's not like the old days of smuggling in rolled up papers or writing inside a water bottle -- "cheating" (if you can even call it that) has basically never been easier.
A lot of the people running these scams have been kidnapped and moved to lawless zones forced to scam people. They don’t really have the choice to do legitimate work.
The fact is, that for VC's it makes perfect sense to push for growth as much as possible. For every one of their portfolio startups. That doesn't necessarily make sense for the founders, who likely might prefer lower risk and profits instead.
VC's don't care about mediocre successes. They want couple of huge exits, and if the rest go bankrupt, they don't give a shit. That's the VC business model and all the great company-building "advice" they give, is actually just crafted to generate profits to them, not really to make sense for the founders or other stakeholders.
He's not oblivious to this and the answer lies in "Raise on Your Own Terms" section.
Linear raised its A during the 2020-2021 frenzy and its Series B when every VC was telling their portfolio companies to reduce burn and get a 4-5 year runway. They created a profitable business in between.
They get to do every single thing exactly how they want to until they raise again (if they ever do).
Correct. Those raises were made when there was some uncertainty about how the business would grow, and the opportunity and timing seemed right. For example, in 2022, it was difficult to predict how deep the market downturn would be. We saw several customers churn because their companies folded. In the end, the market didn't tank as bad than some expected, and we executed better than anticipated. In hindsight, we might not have needed that funding, but at the time, the outlook wasn’t as clear.
Part of this post is to debunk the myth that can be VC backed startup, be profitable and grow fast at the same time. VCs are quite keen in this approach too.
They address this in the article, and I'd say it's rather the opposite of being oblivious. Rather, they understand that you can get way better deals by choosing the times when investors come crawling to you as opposed to times when you're short on cash and the investors know they have you over a barrel.
It's not required of the founder to sell the company cheaply to investors, even though the investors would of course quite like that.
