London - Open Banking Excellence (OBE), the global centre of community and knowledge driving change in Open Finance, is preparing to gather industry leaders around a virtual Campfire for a deep dive into payments initiation in Brazil.

It has now been more than one year since Brazil first enabled Payment Initiation, with Mercado Pago later becoming the first Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) in H1 2022.

On September 27, key players in the Brazilian financial services industry will gather around OBE’s digital Campfire to discuss Payment Initiation, consider the opportunities ahead and shine a light on the phenomenal growth of Open Finance in Brazil. OBE will also fly the flag for the UK, which set a blueprint for other countries worldwide to follow and has retained its global leadership position.

The Campfire will be held in local Portuguese and feature a fireside chat in English with James Hickman, Chief Commercial Officer of Ecospend, who will discuss his work with HMRC on a world-leading “Pay By Bank Account” use case. The UK tax, payments and customs authority introduced the option of paying taxes via Open Banking payments in March 2021. Since then, it has saved £500,000 in bank charges and processed more than £8bn in payments involving 2.7 million transactions.

Hosted by Eliseu Tudisco, Strategy Principal Director, Accenture, speakers from Brazil’s ecosystem include Ivo Mósca, Superintendent of Open Finance & Digital Payments at Itaú Unibanco; Karen Machado, Open Finance Executive Manager at Banco do Brasil, Nathan Marion, General Manager, LATAM, at Volt, Vitor Levi da Silveira, CDO & Open Finance Lead, Cielo and Aristides Cavalcante Neto, Chief of CyberSecurity and Technologic Innovation Office at Banco Central do Brasil.

Open Banking enables banks and other financial institutions to securely share consumer data with third parties on a consent-driven basis to enable the creation of innovative new services. Open Finance is the next step in the journey and allows mortgages, savings, pensions, insurance, and other sectors to unlock the possibilities of data-sharing.

Brazil introduced Open Banking and Open Finance in four phases. Phases 1 and 2 focused on data connection, allowing users to share registration information between financial institutions. Phase 3  involved the initiation of Pix transactions, the Brazilian instant payment system, by payment transaction initiators, and Phase 4 marked the introduction of Open Finance and enabled the sharing of data on investments, pensions, insurance, and other products.

The latest statistics from the Central Bank of Brazil show that the ecosystem has now processed a total of 8.5 million customer data sharing consents. There are now an average of 286 million API calls per week - amounting to more than five billion API calls since April 1 2022. In August 2021 alone, there were 60,000 payment initiations. Brazil has over 5.6 million Open Finance customers, and more than 800 institutions have participated in the phased introduction of Open Finance.

Eliseu Tudisco, Strategy Principal Director, Accenture, said: “Brazil started the implementation of Open Finance with the launch of the first phase, in early 2021, and has an ambitious agenda considering the four phases of regulation. With the full completion of all phases, Brazil will have the most comprehensive Open Finance scope in the world, becoming the main Open Finance benchmark globally. A reason for pride and satisfaction for all participants in this phenomenal deployment.

“We have already seen a strong growth in the use of Open Finance, which will have an even greater growth with the increase in awareness and creation of new business models to not only increase financial inclusion and competitiveness, but also accelerate integrated journeys, personalization and capturing efficiency in the use of different types of financial products. It has been a milestone in my career to participate in this fabulous deployment and I look forward to the benefits that this rich ecosystem will bring to the Brazilian financial system.”

Earlier this year, speakers at a previous OBE Campfire also predicted that Brazil’s Open Finance ecosystem would become the largest in the world.

Helen Child, Founder of OBE, said: “The eyes of the world are on Brazil. Payment Initiation was an important milestone and we are expecting to see the Brazilian ecosystem become a global leader. The pace of adoption and implementation has been hugely impressive. Everyone working in the Brazilian Open Banking and Open Finance ecosystem should be very proud. The pace is simply phenomenal.

“Brazil is now at the forefront of the global Open Finance movement, which can improve financial inclusion and help to create a greener, fairer financial services industry. The innovation taking place in Latin America is not just game-changing - but world-changing. It is a great honour to be involved in the Open Finance ecosystem in Brazil.”

Host:

Eliseu Tudisco, Strategy Principal Director, Accenture

Panel 1 - Local Portuguese

  • Nathan Marion, General Manager, LATAM, Volt
  • Ivo Mósca, Superintendent of Open Finance & Digital Payments, Banco Itaú
  • Karen Machado, Open Banking Executive Manager,  Banco do Brasil
  • Aristides Andrade Cavalcante Neto, Deputy Head of Information Technology Department, Banco Central Brasil
  • Vitor Levi da Silveira, CDO & Open Finance Lead, Cielo

Fireside Chat

Host: Helen Child, Founder, Open Banking Excellence  (OBE) - 15mins

Guest: James Hickman, Chief Commercial Officer, Ecospend