Trump’s Brazil Threats Aid Effort to Hobble Beloved Pay Platform

Credit card companies won a new and powerful ally in their fight against a competing payment system in Brazil when President Donald Trump went on the offensive against the South American country.

Brazil’s wildly popular digital payments platform Pix, long the bane of Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and Big Tech, is one of several targets of US probes over allegations of unfair trade practices. If the Trump administration sides with companies’ arguments that Pix has an unjust advantage and needs higher security standards, it would be a win for the companies and a blow against government-backed payment technologies like ...