Thiago Alvarez

Entrepreneur. Creator of Open Banking in Brazil. Guiabolso Founder (sold to PicPay); Angel Investor; living in Hawaii

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

1/
🇧🇷 Brazil quietly built the world’s largest regulated Open Finance stack:

• 103M active data-sharing authorizations

• 68M linked accounts

• ≈4B API calls/week

• ~R$1.2B/month in payment initiation (and just starting)

All of this only happened because of Guiabolso, a startup I founded with Ben Gleason.

In the Central Bank’s 5-year Open Finance book, I told our story 🧵

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

@elonmusk @CommunityNotes @CommunityNotes. Nice. You should send a message to people that have just read the post (or show it again on their feed).

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

Some thoughts about this:
1) For now, we haven’t seen very complex software being built overnight through vibe coding, but it’s probably a matter of time before that really starts happening
2) It’s easier to copy the general idea of a software, but the corner cases, the very specific workflows, is much harder and it’s usually hidden to the general public
3) If your premise is correct that you could copy 5 years of code very fast in a dorm room, wouldn’t it also apply to the code that you are shipping daily as you are learning from clients and market?

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

Always believed in the potential for real world impact of AI

https://t.co/8ouJlFtFfs

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

18/ Future

Brazil proved regulated Open Finance can scale.

Next steps:
- Improved Open Finance for businesses
- Credit portability
– Lower costs for small players
– Cross-border interoperability
– Exporting Brazil’s know-how
– AI-ready APIs & digital agents transacting for us

Brazil is showing the world what’s possible. 🌍✨

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

1/
🇧🇷 Brazil quietly built the world’s largest regulated Open Finance stack:

• 103M active data-sharing authorizations

• 68M linked accounts

• ≈4B API calls/week

• ~R$1.2B/month in payment initiation (and just starting)

All of this only happened because of Guiabolso, a startup I founded with Ben Gleason.

In the Central Bank’s 5-year Open Finance book, I told our story 🧵

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

17/ Open Finance in action

Users can schedule recurring payments — like a gym membership — directly from their account through Open Finance rails.

No manual transfers. Just clean, automated payments.

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

13/ Reinvention & exit

Guiabolso pivoted to B2B: providing data & tech to banks/fintechs. Started negotiating large deals.

2021: Guiabolso was acquired by PicPay.

By 2023, when my earnout ended, PicPay was Brazil’s largest Open Finance payment initiator & top data recipient.

[Thiago Alvarez @thiago_alvarez]

11/ Central Bank engagement

2016: we pitched our lending model to BC. They encouraged us to form an association.

We created ABCD (Brazilian Association of Digital Credit) with other fintechs.

2018: regulation introduced SEP (peer-to-peer lending) and SCD (direct credit company) licenses.

A milestone in modernizing credit.