Brazil postpones third phase of Open Banking roll-out | ZDNet

The roll-out of the Open Banking in Brazil has been postponed as the third phase of the initiative, due to start today (30) shifted to October 2021.

Open Banking – a practice that allows third party financial services firms to access consumer banking, transactional and other data from through, and other data with their consent through application programming interfaces (APIs) – is being introduced in Brazil through a phased approach.

The third phase of the initiative, which enables consumers to share data in order to pay bills, access credit and make money transfers outside their bank’s environment, had been broken down into parts to encompass the various payment types available in Brazil.

The initial scope of the third phase, which relates to instant payment system Pix, would have gone live today. However, the Central Bank changed the start date of this implementation stage to October 29th, 2021. According to the institution, this was a response to demands from the structure responsible for the governance of the implementation of Open Banking in the country.

The decision to change the timescales was due to the need for adjustments in the technical specifications, the Central Bank argued, saying these tweaks compromised the deadline for carrying out tests for the certification of the participating institutions.

One of the most important phases of the Brazilian project, which involves sharing customer registration and transactional data, was also delayed. The second phase of the project went live in August 13, nearly a month after the originally planned date: at the time, the Central Bank said participating institutions needed extra time to finalize the tests to secure the approval and registration of their open APIs.

Forecast to start in December, the last phase of the project relates to sharing of additional customer details, in areas such as foreign exchange services, investments, insurance and salary accounts. Phases 3 and 4 of the project will be gradually introduced and Open Banking in Brazil will be fully rolled in Brazil by September 2022 rather than end of 2021 as initially planned.

The Brazilian Open Banking project was approved by the Central Bank in early 2019 as part of a broader modernization agenda of the country’s financial system. At the time, the plan was that the project would start in the second half of 2020, a timescale delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The implementation process started in February 2021.