Just at the time when leaked phone conversations raised doubts over the integrity of Brazil’s Car Wash investigation into corruption, and far-right president Jair Bolsonaro threatened national development bank head Joaquim Levy over the appointment of a senior staffer previously linked to the rival Workers Party, the country’s central bank unveiled plans to modernise its financial sector.
At the end of May 2019, the Central Bank of Brazil released action points aimed at improving financial inclusion and education, transparency and competitiveness. The latter includes open banking, which many consider the most disruptive global initiative of recent years, not only for the payments sector but, more broadly, for financial services as a whole. Brazil is a country where the costs of transactions and bank credit are still high. Interchange fees on credit card transactions ranged from 1.54% and 2% in 2017, the latest available data collected by the central bank; in the EU these are capped at 0.3%.
