Brazil was one of the pioneering countries in implementing Open Finance, following the experience of the United Kingdom. The Brazilian model started out as Open Banking, but was renamed with a view to adding different financial services. In August 2025, Open Finance celebrated its fifth anniversary with promising data.
Developed by the Central Bank, Open Finance can be translated as “open financial system”. Through this technology, consumers and companies can authorize their bank to share their information with other financial institutions. This sharing may be of interest to a customer of bank A who wishes to consult the loan conditions offered by bank B, even if they have no previous relationship with that bank.
When information is shared, it helps to analyze the client's profile and define the conditions under which credit will be offered. As a result, the cost of credit can be affected in two ways: the greater availability of information, which reduces the risk of the operation, and the stimulation of competition between financial institutions. In 2023, in the 4th phase of implementation of Open Finance, the scope of shared information was expanded to include investment data.
The aim of Open Finance is to reduce a major challenge faced by institutions that grant credit: information asymmetry. The creation of this system came in the wake of the new Positive Registry, which will be five years old in 2024. These instruments work in a complementary way to modernize the credit market, broadening the scope of information available to the financial system.
In the field of payments, Open Finance offers functionalities that allow users to carry out transactions and balance inquiries from platforms or applications other than their bank, while maintaining authentication requirements for the security of transactions. These functionalities aim to improve the experience of financial services users, making transactions more agile and facilitating the management of resources by consumers who have a banking relationship with more than one institution.
The most recent data on the use of this infrastructure released by the Central Bank shows that Open Finance accounts for more than 100 million active data-sharing authorizations and handled around R$ 1.16 billion in payments and transfers in July 2025. In the area of credit operations, between 2021 and 2025, R$ 31 billion was released in operations that relied on Open Finance data sharing.
The infrastructure also includes standardized data on the characteristics of traditional banking products and services. This information can be used to build platforms that compare the cost and benefit of financial services in different institutions, facilitating the price research already practiced in other types of goods and services.
Newer features, such as smart transfers, which allow users to create rules for the automatic transfer of funds between their accounts, could make managing personal finances even easier. Other features are yet to be created, such as credit portability within Open Finance. Portability already exists in order to stimulate competition, but the aim is to make this process faster and more efficient.
Technological and regulatory innovation is reshaping the way consumers manage their financial lives. Initiatives such as Cadastro Positivo, SCR and Open Finance seek to empower consumers to take advantage of using their own data, while creating incentives for building a good credit history.
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