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The state of transparency in Brazil

Hidden Fees

In 2022, Brazil's new foreign exchange laws mandated fee disclosure for international transactions but did not specify the exchange rate to be used, allowing providers to hide fees in exchange rate mark-ups.

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What are Brazil's foreign exchange laws (“VET”)?

New Total Effective Value (VET) laws came into force in 2022, which require providers to show fees on foreign transactions. The VET sums up all charges applicable to an FX transaction, which includes the exchange rate, the financial operations tax and fees.

The exchange rate to be used is not defined within the law, allowing providers to continue to hide FX mark-ups by showing fees against the exchange rate of their choosing. This keeps the status quo of inflated exchange rates in place and dampens any competitive incentive to lower remittances costs. The Central Bank of Brazil has the power to clarify the VET law and require all fees - including any exchange rate mark-up - to be shown to the consumer.
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Illustration of a document

How hidden fees impact you

We looked at the state of transparency of different Brazilian providers, checking to see if they hide fees in exchange rate mark-ups.
Of providers are not fully transparent

100%

Average mark-up in Brazil

2.2%

Transparent providers

0

How transparent are they?

We looked at a number of providers across Brazil. View the table below and download the report.
Read the report
Table showing transparent banking information of Brazilian providers

Take action. Sign our petition.

Want a fairer financial world? Us too. Sign our 'Nothing to Hide' petition to ask businesses, government and civil society to demand an end to the lack of transparency that keeps international payment / remittance prices artificially high.

Methodology

Information on this website has been collected from each of the providers, by following their money transfer flows.

Research focuses on international payments from Brazil to the United States (BRL to USD). These payments are subject to the Total Effective Value (VET) FX Law.

Comparison of the foreign exchange reference rates provided by XE Historical Currency Rates and Google Finance.

Screenshots collected between May 2023 and January 2024.

This is a one-off snapshot from the provider's payment journey at a specific point in time. These payment flows are subject to change. The exchange rate markups may fluctuate.