Why is Brazil a hotspot for financial crime?
Its success as a fintech hub is mostly to blame
Brazillians have long been early adopters of fintech. In 2017 EY, an accounting firm, found that two-fifths of Brazilians regularly used online banking, one of the highest rates worldwide. In 2020 44% of customers had a digital-only account, compared with less than 20% in the United States and Canada, according to a survey by Accenture, a consulting firm. That year the central bank released Pix, an instant-payments platform. It has been wildly successful. Today it has 3bn transactions a month. That is five times more than transactions by debit and credit cards combined.
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This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Hacker heaven”
From the January 6th 2024 edition
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