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AUGUST 4, 2026 |
PTX Exchange opens the US-Brazil corridor: 90% of transfers land in 30 minutes
Send straight from WhatsApp, with the live rate on screen before you confirm. Also this week: the Fed may raise rates instead of cutting them, and thousands of work permits ride on tomorrow’s ruling. |
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In this edition
| 01 | PTX Exchange opens the Brazil corridor: 30 minutes, WhatsApp, Pix on the other end | | 02 | The Fed held rates. Three officials voted to raise them. | | 03 | A federal judge rules tomorrow on tens of thousands of work permits | | 04 | Four tools, starting with PTX Exchange |
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Just launched · PTX Exchange
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PTX Exchange opens the Brazil corridor: 30 minutes, WhatsApp, and Pix on the other end PTX Exchange opened its money-transfer corridor from the United States to Brazil on Monday. The company says 90% of transfers settle in 30 minutes or less. You send from the app or straight from WhatsApp, the exchange rate appears live on screen before you confirm, and the money lands in Brazil through a Pix key, whether that is a CPF, an email, a phone number or a random key. Support is staffed by people, in your language. It is a FinCEN-registered money services business (Reg. 31000320793963), backed by American banks, built by immigrants for immigrants. Disclosure: PTX Exchange is a PTX Group company, the same company that publishes this newsletter. What follows is the market context, so you can judge it for yourself. The timing matters more than the product. Today the dollar bought about R$5.10. It has barely moved over the past month, but it is down roughly 7.3% against the real over the past year. Every dollar you send home is worth noticeably less in Brazil than it was a year ago, which makes whatever you lose in fees and spread hurt twice. And that loss is bigger than most people think. The World Bank’s most recent published survey of the US to Brazil corridor (data collected August–September 2025, so treat it as context rather than today’s quote) put the average total cost of sending $200 at 5.63%, with individual providers ranging from about 1% to well over 9%. On $1,000 a month, the distance between the cheap end and the average is roughly $550 a year. R$5.10 per US dollar, Aug 4, 2026 (XE mid-market) | 30 min settlement for 90% of transfers, per PTX Exchange | 5.63% avg. cost to send $200 US to Brazil (World Bank, data Aug–Sep 2025) |
The bottom line Before your next transfer, write down two numbers: the rate you were quoted, and the amount that actually landed in Brazil. Compare that rate to the mid-market rate on the same day, which XE or Google will show you in five seconds. If the gap is more than a couple of percent, you are paying a spread nobody quoted you out loud. Run one $200 test this week, keep the receipt, and make every provider you use compete against that number. |
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Counterintuitive · Washington
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The Fed held rates steady. Three officials voted to raise them. On July 29 the Federal Open Market Committee left the federal funds target at 3.50%–3.75%, the fifth consecutive hold. The real headline is the vote: 9 to 3, and all three dissents were for a quarter-point increase, not a cut. Cleveland’s Beth Hammack, Minneapolis’s Neel Kashkari and Dallas’s Lorie Logan all wanted rates higher. The reason is inflation that will not finish the job. Core PCE ran 3.3% year over year in June, unchanged from May and still well above the Fed’s 2% target. Headline PCE eased to 3.7% from 4.1%, but that drop came mostly from energy prices falling on the Iran truce, not from broad disinflation. Energy relief reverses. Futures markets now put a better-than-even chance on the September move being up rather than down. That is a different world from the one most small-business plans were written in. “We are focused like a laser on making sure we can deliver.” Kevin Warsh, Federal Reserve Chair, July 29, 2026 |
3.50–3.75% fed funds target, 5th straight hold | 9 to 3 vote, and all three dissents were for a hike | 3.3% core PCE, June, unchanged from May |
The bottom line Stop building next year around cheaper money. If you have been waiting on a rate cut to finance a second truck, a new crew or a shop buildout, price that deal at today’s rate this week. If it does not work at 3.75%, it is not a financing problem, it is a margin problem. And since debt is not getting cheaper, the cheapest growth left on the table is squeezing more jobs out of the leads you are already paying for. |
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Deadline · Tomorrow
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A judge rules tomorrow on work permits for tens of thousands of workers In Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts v. USCIS, Judge Nathaniel Gorton of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued an emergency stay in late July. It temporarily blocks USCIS from cutting TPS-based work permits to one-year terms, and from rejecting asylum applications, terminating work authorization or starting removal proceedings over non-payment of the new $100 annual asylum fee. Reporting puts the number of people affected in the tens of thousands, including TPS holders from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine plus asylum seekers with pending cases. Here is the part that lands on you as an employer. The stay expires tomorrow, August 5, when Gorton said he would rule on a longer-term injunction. Until then, the expiration dates sitting in your I-9 file are provisional. And ICE reclassified a long list of I-9 paperwork errors as substantive violations earlier this year, so the cost of guessing wrong sits with the business, not the employee. | 📋 | Pull every I-9 you hold, not just the ones you think are affected. | | 📅 | List each employee whose authorization is document-dependent, with the exact expiration date printed on the card. | | ⚖ | Check the outcome Thursday morning. If the stay narrows, some of those dates move. |
The bottom line Do the file review today, not Thursday. Pull every I-9, list each employee whose work authorization depends on a document, and write down the expiration date printed on the card. A single sheet of paper is enough. Then check the ruling Thursday morning. If Gorton narrows the stay, you will already know exactly who to talk to and in what order, instead of reconstructing it under pressure. |
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PTX Exchange first · no repeats
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Four tools that make cash last longer while credit stays expensive 📱 PTX Exchange Free app · low fees · live rate before you confirm Send from the US to Brazil from the app or from WhatsApp, with the rate on screen before you confirm and Pix delivery on the other end. Human support in Portuguese, Spanish and English. FinCEN-registered MSB. ptxexchange.com |
🧾 Wave Free (Pro $19/mo) Unlimited invoices, estimates, bills and bookkeeping on the free tier, with no trial clock. Card payments run 2.9% + $0.60. The fastest way off spreadsheet invoicing without a subscription. waveapps.com/pricing |
💳 Melio Free plan: 5 ACH payments/mo, $0.50 each after (paid from $25/mo) Pay suppliers and subs by bank transfer or card on your schedule. Paying a supplier with a card while they receive a bank deposit keeps cash in your account weeks longer without touching a credit line. meliopayments.com/pricing |
✍ SignWell Free for 3 documents/mo · Light $10/mo unlimited Get estimates and change orders signed on a phone in under a minute. The free tier covers a small shop, and $10/mo removes the document cap entirely. signwell.com/pricing |
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Quick reads this week The launch, reported in Portuguese by Diário Brasil USA, with corridor details, speed and the WhatsApp flow. Read the report › |
CNBC’s recap of the July 29 Fed decision, including the three dissents in favor of a hike. Read the recap › |
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Don’t take our word for it. Verify it yourself. Paste any of these into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini with web search on. If we got something wrong, we want you to find it. Story 01 What is the current USD/BRL exchange rate, and how has it moved over the past month and the past year? Separately, what does the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database report as the average total cost of sending $200 from the United States to Brazil, and for which data collection period? |
Story 02 At its July 29, 2026 meeting, what did the FOMC do with the federal funds target range, what was the vote, and did any members dissent, in which direction? What was core PCE inflation year over year in June 2026? |
Story 03 In Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts v. USCIS, what did Judge Nathaniel Gorton’s order block, until what date does the stay run, and which groups of work-authorization holders does it cover? |
See every source behind this edition › |
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Sending money to Brazil this month?
See the live rate before you confirm, send straight from WhatsApp, and let it land on a Pix key in minutes.
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