Pix has certainly been one of the best things ever created in Brazil. There are already expansion plans, but that’s not what I want to discuss — rather, the possibility of Pix one day becoming our virtual currency.
What do you think about that? Would you find it viable?
I can’t see the benefits of a government-controlled digital currency when compared to the autonomous digital currencies that are already in circulation.
That said, I think it’s inevitable that we’re heading toward an era where paper money and coins are extinct.
I myself no longer use physical cash, and I’m not even talking about a currency built on a blockchain.
Pix will certainly revolutionize payments, but I find it hard to see it becoming a virtual currency. It still has bureaucracy, it has costs for companies, it is still completely centralized under the Central Bank and controlled by the government, etc.
I hope so, I’ve been wanting this kind of thing to happen for about 15 years… but people will continue to lose their phones, cards, etc… in other words, it will be much more complicated for banknotes and coins to become extinct. :\
That’s exactly why it has a future. No government wants to give up control over the money in circulation. Physical paper is completely outdated.
It’s high time we start seeing virtual alternatives emerge, but no country is going to let a decentralized virtual currency become its national currency. Especially since currencies like Bitcoin only have value due to excess liquidity and speculative bias.
PIX is not a currency. PIX is a means of transferring money.
I think Brazil is still far from that, with many regions lacking internet, which makes it difficult to implement a digital currency that fully replaces physical cash.
Now, in urban centers, I sincerely hope that in the coming years we can stop using physical cash, but this runs into some questionable services/companies that only accept cash because they don’t want to declare their earnings.
For example, today to go to a neighboring city I have to take a ferry that only accepts cash. Not to mention that tolls don’t make it easy either, charging monthly fees.
@vctgomes can any of today’s virtual currencies complete a transaction in under 10 seconds?
I know. It’s just that it’s easier to create that money transfer method and then use that same established method to circulate Pix as a virtual currency.
This is a possibility. Today PIX only works with the Brazilian real, but it can indeed be adapted to work with the „digital real“ or any other currency the Central Bank wants to use.
If you wait for that not to be a problem, it will always be a problem, and we’ll never have started implementing it.
I think it’ll be a while before physical money disappears in Brazil because corrupt politicians love cash.
To pay tolls without using cash, there’s the C6 Tag from C6 Bank that doesn’t charge a monthly fee.
Pix is a way to transfer Reais, which is our currency that exists in both physical bills and virtual form (in your bank account — money hasn’t had any backing for years).
So, I don’t believe it will evolve to the level of becoming a state-backed virtual currency, like „Pay me 100 Pix.“ However, it’s only natural that physical cash will naturally decrease in circulation, with everything being done through other digital methods.
What might happen is an evolution of our banking system, adopting open banking and blockchains (from cryptocurrencies), technologies that open up new possibilities for a 100% digital economy.
Something I’d like to see is an implementation with blockchain — then I’d love to see what clever workaround they’d come up with.
But we’ve already started implementing this, Pix will be the main payment method, we don’t need to separate physical currency from digital currency.
What I said is that we won’t get rid of physical currency in the short or medium term.
What I mean is that Brazil doesn’t have a clear position on having a virtual currency and eliminating physical cash. Even if that becomes a reality in 10 years, there’s no established timeline.
The timeline would be at least 30 years — we’re a country of continental proportions, with vast forests.
Today there’s no widely available technology for digital payments without internet, and I don’t see us getting internet coverage in the forest anytime soon. So without the necessary technologies in sight, there’s no way to make a realistic plan.
Unless you know of some digital payment solution that can work in the middle of the woods that I don’t know about.
Using NFC?
But let’s be realistic, the future will be connected. You can’t base a technology’s progress on outliers. Problems will always exist, in any circumstance.
I’ve never seen NFC implemented for offline cash payments; I have my doubts about the security.
But if the goal is to get rid of physical cash, that’s only possible if a technology that covers all situations is implemented. Otherwise, you’ll always have two currencies in circulation and the constant problem of exchanging between them.
Thinking that half-baked planning will solve it is a very simplistic — not to say stupid — way of thinking.
I once paid with my phone in a place where my phone didn’t have a signal, but the card machine obviously needed to have one.
For Pix, the phone would also need to have a signal.