Opening a Bank Account in Brazil as a Foreigner

Three authorities write these rules and none is the bank: Congress, the central bank, the tax office. Checked on September 16, 2026, here is what each of them says.

An account is a right, not a favour

Law 13,445 of May 24, 2017, the Lei de Migração, spends its fourth article listing what a migrant is guaranteed in Brazil. Inciso XIV is six words long in Portuguese — direito a abertura de conta bancária, the right to open a bank account — sitting between inciso XIII, on access to information and confidentiality of the migrant's personal data, and inciso XV, the right to leave and re-enter while a residence application is pending.

Then comes the sentence that matters. Paragraph 1 says those rights are exercised independentemente da situação migratória: regardless of migratory status. It carries one reservation, observado o disposto no § 4º deste artigo, and that reservation points at nothing. Paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 of the article were vetoed, and the published text prints each as (VETADO). The exception was never enacted.

Read it for what it is, though. The statute removes nationality and status as grounds for refusal; it does not order a bank to open an account for someone it cannot identify.

The central bank names no document

Account opening is governed by Resolution CMN 4,753 of September 26, 2019, whose second article requires institutions to adopt procedures that let them verificar e validar a identidade e a qualificação dos titulares da conta — verify and validate the identity and standing of account holders.

Which papers achieve that is deliberately left open. Article 8 hands the decision to each institution: the criteria defining what information is needed devem ser formalizados em documento específico, formalised in a specific document, kept updated and at the central bank's disposal. That document is internal, and nothing obliges anyone to publish it.

So the question every foreigner asks — which document does Brazil accept? — has no national answer. Across fifteen articles, the words for passport, identity card and residence card appear in none. A branch that asks for something another branch waved through is following its own article 8 paper, not improvising. Article 2, paragraph 2 does allow a lighter path: an account opened on a simplified qualification process, against limites adequados e compatíveis de saldo e de aportes — suitable caps on balance and deposits, the same trade-off that later governs a PIX key.

What the rules do fix is not a passport

The identification minimum sits in another norm: Circular BCB 3,978 of January 23, 2020, the anti-money-laundering rule. Its article 16, paragraph 2 says identifying an individual customer requires collecting, at a minimum, o nome completo e o número de registro no Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas (CPF) — full name and CPF number. That is the 2021 wording, given by Resolution BCB 119 of July 27, 2021.

A name and a tax number. No document is named here either, but the floor is concrete, and it inverts the order most arrivals plan. The passport is not what opens the account; the CPF is. If you do not have one, that is the first task — how to get a CPF covers the routes, and what a CPF actually is explains why the number follows you to the supermarket till.

The passport door is written for people who live abroad

There is a travel-document route, one paragraph further down the same article. Paragraph 3 admits it for a cliente pessoa natural residente no exterior desobrigada de inscrição no CPF — an individual customer resident abroad who is exempt from CPF registration — collecting at least the issuing country, number and document type.

Both conditions are cumulative, and moving here breaks the first. The tourist rule and the resident rule are neighbours in one article, and the only thing between them is living in Brazil. Someone who genuinely stays abroad wants the non-resident account in reais covered in PIX without a Brazilian account; a two-week visitor is served by what tourists can do with PIX and which foreign cards work here.

Two separate rules push you to the same number

Here the circle closes, from the other side. Normative Instruction RFB 2,172 of January 9, 2024 lists who must register for a CPF, and item II reaches people residentes no Brasil ou no exterior — resident in Brazil or abroad — who, among other things, possuírem, no Brasil, contas bancárias, de poupança ou de investimentos: who hold bank, savings or investment accounts in Brazil.

Holding the account is itself a trigger that makes the tax number compulsory, whether or not you live here. Two authorities, writing for unrelated reasons, land on the same instruction — and no version of this ends with a passport standing in for the number.

What you can show before the residence card arrives

The CRNM, the national migration registry card, is a resident foreigner's identity document, and it does not arrive on the day you apply. Decree 9,199 of November 20, 2017 covers the wait in article 63, paragraph 1: until the card is issued, the registered immigrant presents the protocol received when applying, together with a travel document or another identification document established by an act of the Minister of Justice and Public Security, and terá garantido os direitos previstos na Lei nº 13.445, de 2017, pelo prazo de até cento e oitenta dias, prorrogável pela Polícia Federal, sem ônus para o solicitante — keeps the Migration Law rights for up to 180 days, extendable by the Federal Police, at no cost.

Put the two together and the account is one of those rights, because article 4, XIV is where it lives. That is an inference from two norms, not a sentence anyone published: no rule instructs a bank to accept the protocol as identification, and the institution's article 8 paper decides. What it settles is that any reservation is the bank's own, not a hole in your status. Do not confuse this clock with the other one: a foreign driving licence runs from the day you entered Brazil, not from this protocol.

Sources

• The right, and the vetoed paragraph its reservation points at. Law 13,445 of 2017, article 4 (accessed September 16, 2026)
• Identification duties and the internal criteria paper. Consolidated version 6, amended through Resolution CMN 5,261 of 2025. Resolution CMN 4,753 of 2019 (accessed September 16, 2026)
• The minimum data and the travel-document exception. Consolidated version 5, with the 2021 wording of article 16. Circular BCB 3,978 of 2020 (accessed September 16, 2026)
• Who must register for a CPF. No consolidated text exists; the six Normative Instructions that cite or amend it in the Diário Oficial were read on September 16, 2026, and none touches article 4. Normative Instruction RFB 2,172 of 2024 (accessed September 16, 2026)
• The protocol and its 180 days. A stacked text with struck-through passages throughout; article 63 carries no strike. Decree 9,199 of 2017 (accessed September 16, 2026)

Written in Curitiba by Jeff Bruno; the checking is described in how we research. This cluster sits under living here, beside renting a place and the address every form wants. The rest is in all guides.

What we could not verify

• Which documents any specific bank asks a foreigner for. The refusal to answer is the finding: Resolution CMN 4,753 was read article by article and names no document, and article 8 puts the list in an internal paper held at the central bank's disposal. What a counter asks for is commercial practice, and no bank is named here.
• Whether the residence protocol works as identification at a bank. The decree guarantees the Migration Law rights during the protocol, and the account is one of them. Nothing published joins those sentences, so that section is reasoning from two norms, not a rule to quote at a counter.
• Who the tax authority treats as exempt from CPF registration. Circular BCB 3,978 opens the travel-document route only for someone exempt na forma definida pela Secretaria da Receita Federal do Brasil, and defers the definition without citing a rule.