Can you give our readers an overview of what role PagBrasil fills within the payments industry?
PagBrasil is the premier payment processing service for Brazil for Brazilian and international online merchants and e-commerce platforms. We offer the broadest set of domestic payment methods and a wide-ranging service portfolio designed for the needs of mid-sized and larger merchants. Our payment platform is 100% in-house developed – by Brazilians and for the Brazilian market. We provide our merchants with a choice of processing models, from a pure gateway service, to processing a collection and even a hybrid model, that combines both. Our international clients can sell cross border into Brazil and receive their funds in US Dollars or Euros anywhere in the world, or in Brazilian Real within Brazil.
In a recent whitepaper you and your team talked about the Internet of Money. Can you walk our readers through what your team defines as the Internet of Money and what it means to the payment industry?
Our definition of the ‘Internet of Money’ includes everything related to sending, receiving, saving, investing, paying, transferring or remitting amounts of any currency without intermediaries such as banks, card schemes or payment service providers. The money is instantly transferred from one endpoint to another (“peer-to-peer”) directly between companies, organizations and individuals. This new type of direct money flow is made possible by blockchain technology. Bitcoin, launched in early 2009, has proven that the technology is exceptionally robust, fast and inexpensive. Recently, blockchain technology has been developed further in different directions, fueled by billions of VC dollars. What it means for the payment industry? Dramatic disruption which will affect many of today’s market players!
What hurdles has PagBrasil had to overcome to allow for international merchants to use your payment processing service?
It has been a long learning process before we could start processing for international merchants. Brazilian legislation and regulation on currency exchange and international money transfer is very complex and does not always cover all areas of e-commerce business models. For some product categories we needed to discuss the correct categorization directly with the Central Bank of Brazil in order to make sure we were compliant. In addition, certain rules of some of the international card schemes that limit cross border transactions for credit cards had to be taken into account. Today, our solutions cover the needs of any merchant selling digital or physical products or services into Brazil.
Considering PagBrasil has been in the online payment processing business for the past 15 years what would you say that your company does better than any other payment processor?
PagBrasil itself was founded 6 years ago, but its predecessor, from which PagBrasil’s proprietary payment platform is derived, as well as PagBrasil’s organization, has an accumulated know-how of more than 20 years in processing online payments in Brazil. PagBrasil is a full-service PSP with probably the largest number of payment methods and the broadest set value added services in the Brazilian market. We differentiate ourselves and base our growth strategy on operative excellence and innovative products, such as Boleto Flash™, our own payment method that has been a steady success since its launch in June 2015.
On your site, you mention that Brazil is one of the top 10 countries in the world with the highest credit card fraud rates. What does your company do to help remove fraud and lower the risk of it when a merchant uses your services?
PagShield is PagBrasil’s state-of-the-art fraud prevention solution specifically designed for Brazil. Our unique technology with intelligent self-learning buying behavior analyses has proven to be very efficient in identifying fraudulent transactions automatically and thereby saving time on manual reviews and reducing false positives.