What is Open Finance in Brazil and how it changes your finances

You have a checking account at one bank, a credit card at another, a savings pocket at a third and maybe an investment at a brokerage. To find out how much you spent this month, you have to open four apps, add up statements by hand and hope you did not forget anything. That is not a lack of discipline: the financial system was built so that each institution keeps your data to itself.

Open Finance Brasil was created to change that. It lets you, the owner of the data, decide to take your information from one place to another, under clear rules set by Banco Central do Brasil, the country's central bank. The name sounds technical, but the idea is simple: your financial data belongs to you, and you can use it to your advantage.

In this guide you will learn what Open Finance is, how it works in practice, which data can be shared, what it changes in your daily life, its limits and precautions, and how to get started without falling into traps. If you are new to banking in Brazil, it is also one of the easiest ways to get a full picture of your money across Brazilian institutions.

What Open Finance is, in one sentence

Open Finance is a system regulated by the Central Bank and the National Monetary Council (CMN), under Joint Resolution No. 1/2020, that allows standardized sharing of data and services between authorized financial institutions, always with the customer's consent.

It started in 2021 under the name Open Banking, because at first it mostly involved banks. Once investments, foreign exchange, insurance and pension plans came into scope, it was renamed Open Finance.

Three ideas sum up the system:

• The data belongs to the customer. The bank stores it, but you decide where it goes.
• Everything goes through consent. No institution can pull your data on its own.
• Only authorized players take part. Institutions need Central Bank authorization and follow common technical and security standards.

How Open Finance works in practice

Imagine you want to connect your bank account to a money management app. The flow usually goes like this:

1. In the app that will receive the data, you choose the institution you want to connect.
2. The app shows which data it will request, for what purpose and for how long.
3. You are redirected to your own bank's app or internet banking.
4. There, you log in the usual way (biometrics, app password, token) and confirm the authorization.
5. You return to the original app, which starts receiving the data you authorized.

The key point is step 3. Authentication happens inside your bank's environment, not in the third-party app. That is why your password never leaves where it already was. The receiving app gets limited access to what you approved, with an end date.

The technical names help explain the rules:

Under the general rule, a data-sharing consent lasts up to 12 months, and you can follow and cancel your active authorizations in your bank's app, usually in a section for managing Open Finance consents.

Which data and services are included

Open Finance was rolled out in phases. You do not need to memorize the order, but it shows how broad the system is:

Pix, mentioned above, is Brazil's instant payment system, created by the Central Bank in 2020 and used for everything from paying rent to splitting a lunch bill.

In the customer data phase, you can usually choose groups such as personal details, account balance and statement, credit card information (limits, statements and transactions) and credit operations (loans and financing). Each group is checked or unchecked during authorization, depending on what the receiving institution requests for the stated purpose.

One important distinction: sharing data is different from initiating payments. A money management app such as Tobbo uses only the data part, in read-only mode. It sees what happened, but it does not move money. Payment initiation requires a specific authorization for each payment, also confirmed in your bank's app.

What changes for you day to day

In theory, Open Finance is about data. In practice, it is about better decisions. Some concrete uses:

• See everything in one place. Balances, statements and card bills from different banks appear together, without typing anything.
• Expense tracking without manual spreadsheets. Transactions arrive on their own and can be categorized. That solves the main reason people give up when trying to track their expenses: getting tired of writing everything down.
• Fairer credit offers. By sharing your history with another institution, you may get an offer based on your real behavior, not just on what that one bank knows about you. This can be especially useful if you are new to Brazil and have little local credit history.
• Portability and comparison. It becomes easier to compare what you pay in fees, interest and investments.
• Less friction when paying. Payment initiation lets you make a Pix payment without leaving the app where you are shopping, authorizing it at your bank.

None of these benefits is automatic. They depend on you choosing to share, and on the receiving institution using the data well.

Worked example: Camila and her four apps

Camila takes home R$ 5,200 a month. She has a salary account at bank A, a digital account at bank B, a credit card at bank C and an emergency savings pocket at bank D. Before Open Finance, she checked bank A's balance at the end of the month and assumed everything was fine.

When she connected all four institutions to a money management app, she saw her month consolidated for the first time:

The math is simple: 2,380 + 1,140 + 1,620 = 5,140. With an income of 5,200, R$ 60 is left. Camila thought she was saving about R$ 500 a month, because she only looked at bank A. Seeing everything together, she realized her digital account had become the drain for small expenses.

Open Finance did not save money for her. It showed her reality. From there, she set a R$ 800 limit for the digital account. If she sticks to it, her surplus rises to R$ 400 a month (60 + 1,140 − 800 = 400), or R$ 4,800 in a year toward her emergency fund.

Limits and precautions: what Open Finance does not do

Open Finance was designed with security in mind, but it is not magic. It helps to know what it does not solve:

• It does not protect against social engineering scams. If someone talks you into sending a Pix, no data-sharing technology can stop it. Scams such as fake relatives asking for money on WhatsApp or fake bank employees calling you are common in Brazil.
• It does not eliminate the risk of fake pages. Scammers can imitate authorization screens. The golden rule: the real authorization happens inside your bank's official app. If someone asks for your password on a website or form, be suspicious.
• It does not guarantee that the receiving institution uses your data well. It must follow the stated purpose and the LGPD, Brazil's data protection law, but you should still choose carefully who you share with and read what your data will be used for.
• It does not cover every product at every institution. Participation and coverage vary. Some accounts, cards or investments may take a while to appear or may not be available.
• It is not instant for everything. Some information is updated at intervals, not in real time.

A full analysis of the risks and the layers of protection is in our article on whether Open Finance is safe.

Open Finance is not the same as handing over your password

Before Open Finance, many financial apps worked by asking for your bank username and password and logging in "as if they were you" to copy data from the screen. This technique is called screen scraping. It gives broad access, violates many banks' terms of use and can stop working at any moment.

With Open Finance, access goes through standardized APIs, with certificates, a defined scope and time limit, and a record of your consent. If an app asks for your bank password, it is not using Open Finance. The same caution applies to AI tools: our guide on using AI for personal finance safely explains what you should never paste into a chatbot.

How Tobbo uses Open Finance

Tobbo Finanças connects banks and cards through Open Finance Brasil, via the aggregator Malvo, with read-only access. In practice:

• You authorize it in your bank's app and can cancel whenever you want, at your bank or in Tobbo.
• Transactions arrive categorized, and the categorization learns from your corrections.
• Using data from accounts, card statements and budgets, the "Can I spend?" feature tells you whether a purchase fits your month.
• Tobbo does not make Pix payments, does not move money and is not a financial institution.

Official sources and further reading

• Banco Central do Brasil: Open Finance rules and CMN and Central Bank regulations (in Portuguese)
• Open Finance Brasil: official portal with explanations and the list of participants
• General Data Protection Law, LGPD (Law 13,709/2018), in Portuguese