[image credit : Livecoins]
Brazil’s central bank has announced in São Paulo de launch of PIX, a new near-instant payment system that’ll allow for peer-to-peer payments to be processed in up to 10 seconds in response to bitcoin.
According to local news outlet Livecoins, the platform is set to go live on November 10. Roberto Campos Neto, President of Brazil’s central bank, noted PIX was a response to the “new digital economy” market by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Neto was quoted as saying, “Pix came from a need for people to have a payment instrument that is both cheap, fast, transparent and secure. If we think about what has happened in terms of the creation of bitcoins, cryptocurrencies and other encrypted assets, it comes from the need to have an instrument with such characteristics.”
Neto added PIX is one of the most important projects the central bank is launching this year, as it will support Brazil’s financial transformation. Per his words, it will help cut costs by reducing the need for physical money, which he claims “generates a great cost for society.”
The system is set to allow for peer-to-peer payments and it will even be possible to use to pay utility bills, as these will come with a readable QR code. João Manoel Pinho de Mello, Director of the central bank’s Financial System and Resolution Organization, added PIX should be made available by commercial banks to all market participants.
Mello added that using the payment system transactions could be carried out by various methods, not just QR codes. In a way similar to cryptocurrency wallets, there will be address keys, but users will also be able to conduct transactions via mobile numbers or via NFC technology.
The idea, Mello said, is to “make it as easy as chatting in a chat” to send and receive money using a smartphone. Brazil is a country in which the cryptocurrency scene has been growing rapidly. As reported, its largest cryptocurrency exchange has predicted BTC could hit $15,000 this year.
