Funding option for PIX (Brazilian standard payment method)

[dellagustin]

What is PIX

It is a standard Brazilian payment/transfer method. It is defined by the Brazilian Central Bank (Banco Central, BACEN), and supported by all Banks. It is free, even across banks, and some podcasts use it to receive value 4 value contribution. Despite being centralized (by the Central Bank), it is reasonably censorship resistance, as it does not depend on private 3rd parties such as Patreon.

How does it work

Receivers create PIX keys, which can be of different types, including: a telefone number, an e-mail or a randomly generated key (for podcasts, its main contact e-mail would make sense).

With the key alone, anyone can send transfer from their Banking Apps, but the key must be manually copied and pasted.

For a more comfortable experience, it is also possible to generate a QR Code that can be scanned for the transfer, which can include a transfer value.

Unfortunately, while the key type and key value alone are sufficient for a listener to perform a transaction, the QR code requires additional data (Receiver name and City), so that key information alone is not sufficient for generating a QR code. Nevertheless, the banking apps are able to generate the QRCode value (as a string), so that it can be copied and pasted.

How could this work for client apps

There is no app monetization opportunity here (that I can see), but there is an opportunity to facilitate a payment to the podcasts using this method within the app.

I describe below some way it could work.

Generalized solution - show funding information as QR code

Scanning QR code to trigger a payment or donation is probably a common use case for other solutions as well, so a generic solution may be a good option. The tag would need to support:

• An action description - mandatory (e.g. Support us with PIX)
• An extended action description - optional (Scan this PIX QR code with your Banking App, transfer X or more to get access to exclusive content, contact us at ... after the payment to unlock the content)
• The QR code content - mandatory (see example below)
• A "more info" URL - optional (https://thatpodcast.com/support-us-with-pix)

For this option, the funding tag could be extended, but not in a backwards compatible way (as url is currently mandatory), as in the following example:

<podcast:funding 
qr-code="<QR Code Content>"
description="Scan this PIX QR code with your Banking App, transfer X or more to get access to exclusive content, contact us at ... after the payment to unlock the content"
url="https://thatpodcast.com/support-us-with-pix">Support us with PIX</podcast:funding>

Examples

QR Code content sample: 00020126450014BR.GOV.BCB.PIX0123receiveremail@some.mail5204000053039865406100.005802BR5913Receiver Name6013Receiver City62150511Codigoteste63044B88

References

Most references are unfortunately only available in Portuguese.

• https://www.overloadr.com.br/ajude - The webpage of a Brazilian content creator (including podcasts) describing how to contribute (value 4 value) including PIX - with a contribution of 144 BRL, access to exclusive content is granted for a year (manual process is involved after payment)
• https://www.gerarpix.com.br/ - Unofficial website for generating PIX QR codes - as technical reference
• https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/estabilidadefinanceira/spb_docs/ManualBRCode.pdf - technical documentation from the Central Bank

[dellagustin]

I have an idea for a slightly more specific solution, something like:

<podcast:funding 
type="pix-key-<Key Type>"
value="<Key Value>"
description="Use this PIX key to send use a payment and support our work!"
url="https://thatpodcast.com/support-us-with-pix">Support us with PIX</podcast:funding>

This would require the app to know what to do in case it encounters this type, which in this case, the best would be to copy the value to the clipboard and show a pop up or something with a message on what to do with it (e.g. "The PIX key was copied to your clipboard, past it in your banking app", something like that - not very useful actually - I'd like some opinions from the Brazilian community, but I'm not sure there is a lot of Podcasting 2.0 awareness.

[jamescridland]

I'm liking this; Australia has the concept of PayID, which is even easier - you register your email, or a mobile number. Then people just pay, for example, james@cridland.net and the bank app knows what to do with it and where it should be routed (and confirms who 'owns' the PayID). Seems rather easier to me! https://payid.com.au/

My only concern is that adding country-specific payment options like this will bloat the specification, complicate things for developers, and will not guarantee support; but since a podcaster can do multiple funding tags, perhaps that's not a worry - the majority of podcast apps would just ignore the ones they don't know what to do with?

You have reminded me that I should broaden the funding tags within my own podcast.

[dellagustin]

Hi @jamescridland , great to have feedback on the issue so fast.

My only concern is that adding country-specific payment options like this will bloat the specification, complicate things for developers, and will not guarantee support

I totally agree here, that is why my first solution idea was a generalized one. Of course, the more specific you get, the more options you have to make a tailored user experience, but that is a trade-off.

If we have enough examples from different countries, we can cluster some common use cases and maybe come to an even better generalized solution or set of solutions.

[jamescridland]

I think I actually prefer adding specific use-cases, with the proviso that if type is unknown to this podcast app, the podcast app should ignore any entries.

[daveajones]

Mostly related to #444