Last week, Banco Central do Brazil has announced a number of actions, including a $200 transfer limit between individuals between the hours of 8pm and 6am; the creation of a minimum waiting time to increase transfer limits; and the ability for users to set different transaction limits during the day and at night, when robberies are more common.
Brazil’s central bank has been forced to restrict the use of its Pix instant payments platform after a surge in “lightning kidnappings” where citizens have been snatched off the street and forced to make cash transfers in order to be released, according to the Financial Times.
The groundbreaking Pix system was launched late last year. Almost 100m Brazilians have adopted the platform for paying bills and transferring cash. The central bank, however, is now being forced to set restrictions on the until now 24/7 system because of a spike in flash kidnappings.
“These lightning kidnappings were kind of dormant. But since Pix entered the market in November last year, we have noticed a significant increase in cases,” Tarsio Severo, an investigator with the Department of Special Police Operations in São Paulo, told local media, adding that police had arrested 100 suspects involved in such cases since January.
In the first six months of the year, the state — which is home to 44m of Brazil’s 211m population — reported an almost 40 per cent increase in lightning kidnappings, prompting several banks to lobby the central bank, or BCB, to step up security measures.
“In the past, the gangs carried out kidnappings and brought people to ATMs. But now with Pix, the central bank has put the ATM in people’s mobile phones. Crime will always find the easiest way,” said Rafael Alcadipani of the Forum for Brazilian Public Security.
“The central bank’s measures are positive as they help improve the security of the system, but it doesn’t solve the problem. You need to invest in police and have reforms so that criminals actually face the law. And we need to improve social conditions. An unequal country like Brazil will always have problems like these.”
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
