A few large banks in Brazil held most of the customers and most of the data. Open Finance gave customers the right to share their data with whoever they chose. By 2025 it connected 65 million accounts, the largest such system in the world.

The dilemma

Brazil's banking market was highly concentrated. A small number of large banks served most of the country's customers, and as a result held most of the financial data those relationships generated. This was a feature of how the market had developed over decades, not a failing of any one institution. But it created a structural challenge. Newer fintech companies and smaller banks could build strong digital products, but they could not easily access the financial data needed to offer someone a loan or tailor a service, because that data was spread across separate institutions with no common way to share it. The same fragmentation also limited the potential reach of PIX, the central bank's instant payment system, which was being developed around the same goal of a more open and competitive market.

The regulatory gap

What Brazil needed was a system that did three things at once. It had to give people and businesses a legal right to decide who could see their financial data. It had to set a common standard for how that data moved safely between institutions. And it had to require the big banks to take part, rather than letting them opt out. All of this had to happen without weakening security or the customer's control over their own consent.

The approach

What Brazil needed was a system that did three things at once. It had to give people and businesses a legal right to decide who could access their financial data. It had to set a common standard for how that data moved safely between institutions. And it had to apply consistently across all major institutions, so that the system worked as a genuine network. All of this had to happen without weakening security or the customer's control over their own consent.

Results achieved

By August 2025, Open Finance connected around 65 million accounts, with more than 800 financial institutions taking part. In July 2025 alone, it processed around 1.16 billion Brazilian reais in payments and transfers. The number of active permissions to share data passed 100 million, and loans made possible by Open Finance data sharing totalled roughly 31 billion reais between 2021 and 2025. By most measures, it is the largest open-finance system in the world.

Two limits are worth noting. The harder question is who has actually benefited. Surveys of small businesses in Brazil suggest that awareness of Open Finance among ordinary users remains low, even in a country where almost everyone now uses PIX. The infrastructure has been built. The everyday reasons for a customer to use it are still being developed.

The transferable lesson

Open data-sharing systems tend to grow faster when participation is consistent across all major institutions and coordinated centrally, rather than relying on each company to join voluntarily. This is why Brazil's system grew larger than the UK's, even though the UK started first. The harder and less-told lesson is that building the infrastructure is not the same as delivering value to customers. Whether people actually benefit depends on the products and services built on top of the system, by banks and fintechs alike, and those are not something the regulator controls.