I was just thinking that. He says the system has low transaction costs (free for individuals) and is fast (three seconds) instead of taking days. Sending money abroad is more expensive, but if you shop around for services instead of just paying what your bank charges it can be very cheap and fast.
In the UK we have bank transfers that settle in a maximum of two hours (much less usually, although I do not know whether it is as fast as the Brazilian system on average) and is free for individuals. It seems to be the norm globally. Is Krugman entirely unaware of how the rest of the world works?
The one things he is right about is that we do already have central bank digital currencies. Most currencies exist mostly in digital form (I cannot remember the exact number, but got GBP its well over 90%).
An important feature of (some) crypto stablecoins is that they function like cash.
Cash is fungible. And cash in my wallet is not subject to being frozen like a bank account.
One can argue the merits of a digital cash for society. But a crypto-based digital cash is fundamentally different from a digital bank-based payment system.
I did find myself without barely any cash during Spain's blackout and that made it really stressful. It made me value physical currency a lot more.
Now I wish digital payments didn't require a server/ledger connection at all, but I understand that would risk double-spend attacks unless all the computation could be fully trusted, which we can't even guarantee for existing card payments.
Exactly, it's a solution looking for a solved problem. The digital banking you listed out-perform crypto as well, and have heaps of checks and balances, auditing, and guarantees from central banks. All that will need to be reinvented for "crypto" shit, and they need to show some proof as to why it's better before they get the billions of buy-in required.
Well, I think crypto does solve a couple important problems faced by many speculative markets and casinos: Regulation and taxation. It's any scammer, grifter, and thief's paradise!
It's a paradise for all kinds of scum and dark people, like pedos, human traffickers, drug dealers, ransom hackers, mafias etc. And all this receives a great care from the current fascists USA government, who invested in crypto a lot, I suppose.
> SEPA? IBAN-to-IBAN? iDEAL and many other integrated payment systems
None of these are really comparable to Pix, which occupies a different place in the market (although it also covers these use cases). It absorbs almost all P2P payments as well as business payments, where cards and cash were previously dominant.
I'm not familiar enough with Bancontact, but.... Doesn't Bancontact take up to 3 days to the money to get to business?
Does it support every bank? It feels for me Bancontact feels like a Visa/Master thing?
The point about Pix is how it was created by the Central Bank. Between person, it's 100% free, no fees at all. Between business, they allow banks to charge a fee, but the cost it's super low, so a few banks don't have fees at all.
Pix it's just a way on how you can transfer money from your bank app.
About Google Pay thing, Google Pay here integrated Pix, by using open bank solution. So Google Pay basically becomes a 3rd party client for your bank, and thus, allows you use Pix with Tap to Pay, or... with every website on Chrome's.
As soon as you copy the Pix Code to pay, it invokes Google Pay, and you can pay seamless, without switching to any app.
And because every website, store, supports Pix... This basically delivered Google Pay to everything.
Right, so SEPA Instant is a world away from Pix, which is accepted everywhere in Brazil and sometimes is the only payment methods available.
These comments remind me of the infamous Dropbox comment. Pix is identical to SEPA except in all the ways that count to users, which is why it's wildly more popular.
A vanishingly small number of people split bills, pay for chewing gum, etc with SEPA. Third parties including credit/debit cards and Revolut dominate (with their proprietary P2P payments) in the EU.
It simply occupies a different market space and mindshare than Pix.
We do not need crypto, the technology is here and implemented, and bank transfer fees are archaic rent-seeking structures.
Well done Brazil, wake up America.