Customer Data Sharing Under Open Banking Commences In Brazil

One of the most important phases of the Brazilian open banking project, which involves the sharing of customer registration and transactional data, has gone live today (13), enabling consumers to request their financial information is shared with other institutions.

The open banking initiative, introduced by the Central Bank of Brazil in early 2019, aims to boost market competition and increase financial education in the Latin American country. Under the model, use of open application programming interfaces (APIs) enable third-party developers to build applications and services around the participating financial institutions, with consumer data shared with their consent.

"This is a new stage of development of the national financial system", said the regulation director at the Central Bank, Otávio Damaso, at a press event marking the launch of the new phase of the project today. The open banking project is part of a broader modernization initiative led by the institution, which includes the launch of instant payments in 2020.

The second phase of the Brazilian open banking project follows a Central Bank decision last month that moved the introduction of the data sharing phase from the original date of July 15 to August 13, as the participating institutions needed extra time to finalize the tests to secure the approval and registration of their open APIs.

The third phase of the project will see consumers able to pay bills and make money transfers outside their bank's environment. The last phase, forecast for December, is still under technical discussions between the banks. It relates to sharing of additional customer details, in areas such as foreign exchange services, investments, insurance and salary accounts.

Information technology spend among Brazilian banks has seen an 8% increase in 2020 in relation to 2018, according to the yearly survey from the Brazilian Banking Association (FEBRABAN) carried out by Deloitte, released in June. According to the research, factors accelerating that trend include the implementation of Open Banking.