Group items tagged

Ripple Head of Global Banking Marjan Delatinne said that the firm is actively working on developing a payment corridor in Brazil. Ripple's infrastructure for Brazil would make use of its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) technology, which dynamically provides liquidity, rather than using traditional approaches such as the Nostro/Vostro system, and make it easier to process cross-border payments.

Facebook's WhatsApp messaging service rolled out a system across Brazil on that will allow users to send money to individuals or local businesses within a chat. WhatsApp is working with Cielo, Brazil's largest credit and debit card operator, to process the payments. The company has over 120 million individual users in Brazil, its second-largest market behind India, where WhatsApp has been testing a similar system since 2018.

The Central Bank of Brazil launched its instant payments platform Pix on November 16. Pix allows consumers and companies to make money transfers 24/7 without requiring debit or credit cards through a Pix alias or a QR Code. It is also free of charge for individuals. Central bank president Roberto Campos Neto said the central bank is in talks with Bigtech players such as Google and Facebook about entering the Brazilian payments services market, and that WhatsApp will start doing P2P soon. https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/pressdetail/2361/nota

Central Bank of Brazil reveals name of its CBDC DREX will be the official name of Brazil's new ditial real central bank digital currency (CBDC). DREX combines several elements of innovation: the D for digital, R for real, E for electronic, and X for modernity and connection." The Central Bank also released the new visual branding for DREX. https://www.bcb.gov.br/detalhenoticia/17946/nota

The Central Bank of Brazil has kicked off a new phase in the testing process for Pix, the upcoming national instant payments platform, with the simulation of transfers. The tests of the technology underpinning the settlement infrastructure will see participating institutions testing their settlement flows, so the process where resources are transferred from the payer to the recipient, with fictitious data.

Open Banking kicks off in Brazil The first of four phases of Brazil's Open Banking implementation has started, as part of the country's broader agenda of modernization of the national financial ecosystem. In the initial phase, there will be no sharing of data on customer registration or transactional activity. Instead, companies participating in the open banking ecosystem will need to open data on their service channels and the characteristics of banking products and services through open application programming interfaces (APIs). In July's second phase, participating institutions regulated, authorized and supervised by the Banco Central do Brasil will start sharing customer data, with their consent. This will be followed by August's third phase where consumers will be able to pay bills and make money transfers outside their bank's environment. The last phase, forecast for December, relates to sharing of additional customer details, in areas such as foreign exchange services, investments, insurance and salary accounts. https://www.bcb.gov.br/detalhenoticia/17307/nota

"In this paper, we show that approaches based on this type of CBDC design are unlikely to satisfy user demand. We argue that it is more important to focus on the payment system. Drawing on the experiences in Brazil (Pix) and Switzerland (Twint), we show that successful payment systems do not require users to hold system-specific payment assets, making them convenient and accessible. An important motive for the ECB to develop a digital euro is to preserve monetary sovereignty and strategic autonomy. A European payment system could ensure autonomy over such a critical infrastructure of an economy. For it to succeed, the ECB should look to and learn from the best examples."

Millions of people across Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil were left without power early on Sunday after a massive power failure hit all four countries.

Facebook is also working with Visa to power the new payments feature on WhatsApp in Brazil. Payments on WhatsApp are made possible by Visa Direct, Visa's real-time push payments technology, and newly launched Visa Cloud Tokenization, that protects and removes sensitive payment information by converting the data to tokens and storing them securely.

Banco Central do Brasil's ruled that Visa and Mastercard must suspend launching payments and transfers on Facebook's WhatsApp in the country, or must cease such operations immediately. Facebook rolled out WhatsApp payments service in Brazil on June 16. The central bank is concerned about an "adequate competitive environment" in the Brazilian mobile payments market with the entrance of a giant like Facebook.

Central Bank of Brazil President Roberto Campos Neto confirmed that the Digital Real central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot launch will go live later this year. [Read more]

The President of the Central Bank of Brazil, Roberto Campos Neto, reportedly announced that a Digital Real pilot will probably be launched in the second half of 2022.

The president of Banco Central do Brasil (BCB), Roberto Campos Neto reportedly introduced some novel ideas that the central bank has for a possible CBDC, including the integration of the digital real with traditional and decentralized financial structures and institutions. He also showed off a "super app" that will allow customers to hold stablecoins and the CBDC, and showcased the connection the system will have with the already available PIX payments network.

"Back in November 2020, the Central bank of Brazil launched PIX, an instant bank transfer option that uses an app as a digital wallet and creates unique QR codes to facilitate transactions between users."

Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) reportedly aims to launch its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2024. It will be designed to encourage banks to tokenize their assets, so it sounds like it's being designed for niche cases, rather than general purpose usage.The huge popularity of the BCB's PIX payment system might argue for such an approach. Its use now surpasses transactions with credit and debit cards in the country.

"FINANCIAL AND TECNPOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS LABORATORY (LIFT) is an applied research laboratory, configured as a virtual collaborative environment. LIFT aims to foster technological innovation research projects related to the financial industry and supervisory and regulatory activities carried out by the Central Bank of Brazil with the objective of introducing mechanisms for improvement and innovation. As part of LIFT, the LIFT paper magazine is a biannual publication containing the result of the projects developed in laboratories and articles of experts on topics related to innovation in the National Financial System. "

This Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) note discusses the development of its central bank digital currency (CBDC). The main objective is to provide entrepreneurs with a safe and reliable environment to innovate through the use of programmability technologies, such as programable money and smart contracts. In the context of a modern payment system, already available to the Brazilian population, a full-fledged CBDC must enable new functionalities, beyond those brought by an instant payment arrangement. Therefore, the innovation tool for which the BCB envisions the greatest potential is the development of a platform for smart payments.

Banco Central do Brasil will reportedly focus its first digital real tests on determining the levels of privacy and security that can be achieved with the proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) infrastructure. The tests will be conducted later this year and will set up a simplified operation to transact with a still-to-be-determined tokenized asset. The tests would start after the current laboratory phase of the digital real, which is currently being conducted as a part of the open LIFT challenge project that is testing nine different proposals. https://einvestidor.estadao.com.br/comportamento/real-digital-primeiro-teste/

The Banco Central do Brasil's Lift Challenge Real Digital has chosen nine partners to help develop a digital real, Brazil's central bank digital currency (CBDC). They received 47 project proposals from Brazil, Germany, the U.S., Israel, Mexico, Portugal, the U.K. and Sweden. An implementation phase for the selected projects will begin on March 28 and last until July 27, with an eye towards launching a pilot in 2022 and introducing a final version in 2024.

Banco Central dos Brasil (BCB) announced the start of a (wholesale?) central bank digital currency (CBDC) proof-of-concept (PoC) project aimed at providing payment rails executed on distributed ledger technology (DLT) to support the provision of retail financial services, including the purchase and sale of tokenized government bonds, settled through tokenized bank deposits. The PoC is not aimed at leveraging digital payments, as this is already being done on a large scale with Pix, which was launched at the end of 2021 and has been widely adopted.