>Well, you could do that, but that sucks

Only sucks for the Americans though, I think most people non American countries will be fine with that

No it sucks for everyone haha. It's an objectively worse experience compared to just using a card (debit or credit).

The vendors you'd pay with Pix in brazil are typically the vendors who may not even accept cards at all, it's pix or cash.

(Although you CAN pay with pix at many supermarkets, I'd rate it as rare. Also useable for online payments, but you take the risk in case of fraud, unlike with creditcards)

Thanks for the information, reminds me of CashApp or something like that in the US. But just to be clear the context was, at least as I understood, moving to using an app instead of using existing credit card rails via Visa and Mastercard and that's just not going to happen because it's a worse experience (in Europe).

If you don't have the ability to accept a card at all, that's a different use case.

I mean it’s an obvious decision to not accept cards if you can avoid it. You’re letting a company like Amex siphon up to 3% of your income away in perpetuity.

Business owners are forced to accept this situation because customers have your expectation. But it’s really not a good situation we’ve ended up in, letting for-profit, uncompetitive companies skim off the top of consumer spending. It’s frankly a rip-off.

Tap to pay could literally just come from your bank’s app.

> I mean it’s an obvious decision to not accept cards if you can avoid it. You’re letting a company like Amex siphon up to 3% of your income away in perpetuity.

In Brazil you can easily be paying 5-6% when accepting card payments, if not more. You'll generally get a 10% discount when opting to pay with cash in clothing/electronics/etc stores.

Handling cash comes with its own expenses too for business owners. It's not "this costs nothing" and "this costs 3%".

Selling something expensive? Well if a customer doesn't have the cash, by the time they go find an ATM (and pay a fee yay!) they probably changed their mind on the purchase.

There's a myriad of reasons to use cards (credit or debit). There's merits to using cash.

But, back to the actual discussion thread, there's no good reason to try and get tourists to use some convoluted app instead of just paying with a credit card.

How do they get the cash? I'm assuming from an ATM with a Visa or Mastercard.

All the locals can use cash. Friction free. Objectively better

Cash can get misplaced or stolen, you have to keep going to an ATM to get more of it which for most costs money (my bank pays for ATM withdrawals globally for any fee), it's not nearly as convenient as a credit/debit card though it's cheaper. Though maybe it's not since merchants never lower prices and even if everyone switched to cash prices wouldn't go down. Also there are costs for the merchant to carry cash.

I think your everyday credit/debit card is still objectively better overall, even moreso for tourists which was the main topic.

>you have to keep going to an ATM to get more of it

Not if you are paid in cash by your employer

Are we not talking about tourists anymore?

>No it sucks for everyone haha

We were until this guy joined in!

"Everyone" in this context was tourists. If you want to change the subject that's fine, but be honest about it.

Sorry it would suck for everyone, including an Australian like me. How does it not suck?

Why can't I just use my one debit card anywhere, why do I need to setup a separate card with a random app in another country, then another in another country etc.

My visa debit card allows me to travel virtually anywhere and use my own money without issue.

Anything else is just extremely inconvenient and technologically not really necessary