Equifax and Mifundo Open Access to Brazilian Credit Data for European Banks

WHY THIS MATTERS

The partnership between pan-European credit data platform Mifundo and Equifax BoaVista (announced on May 18, 2026) marks a significant evolution in cross-border lending by establishing a data pipeline between Europe and Latin America. Historically, credit risk models have been fiercely domestic. For the more than one million Brazilian nationals living and working across Europe, this geographic fragmentation created a stark “thin-file” penalty. Despite having robust, verified repayment histories in Brazil—tracked heavily under the country’s Cadastro Positivo (positive data-sharing) framework—their creditworthiness vanished the moment they crossed the Atlantic. European banks, blinded by a lack of local credit bureau data, routinely rejected their applications or priced their loans with an inflated risk premium.

Mifundo’s integration of Equifax BoaVista data fixes this structural asymmetric information gap. By aggregating and standardizing Brazilian credit metrics—such as historical payment habits, current debt obligations, and utilization rates—Mifundo enables European underwriting desks to query an international applicant’s financial behavior seamlessly. Crucially, the data is delivered into existing underwriting systems without requiring banks to overhaul their core risk models. This changes the unit economics of migrant lending, transforming an underserved expat segment into a highly accessible, low-friction growth pool for European retail banks.

Mifundo, a pan-European credit data platform, has integrated credit data from Equifax BoaVista, subsidiary of Equifax Inc. in Brazil, enabling European banks to access verified Brazilian credit information as part of their credit assessment processes. 

It allows lenders to retrieve verified credit data from Brazil, including repayment behaviour, existing obligations, and credit usage. The data is standardised and delivered through Mifundo’s platform in a format that integrates directly into existing underwriting workflows, without requiring changes to credit models or decision processes. 

Brazilian nationals living and working in Europe, of whom there are more than one million, are often assessed with incomplete or no credit history when applying for financial products. While many have established repayment histories and financial obligations in Brazil, this data is typically not visible to European lenders through domestic credit bureau systems. As a result, credit decisions are frequently conservative or applications are declined due to lack of verifiable information. 

This marks Mifundo’s first step beyond Europe and establishes a new credit data corridor between Europe and Latin America. The platform already connects credit data from 20+ European countries, covering more than 70% of Europe and is expanding to support increasingly global customer profiles. 

Silvio Santana, Commercial Vice President at Equifax BoaVista: 

“Equifax BoaVista provides a broad and detailed view of the Brazilian population, with established credit histories and with lean files, that are not visible outside the country. By making this data accessible to European lenders, we support more accurate credit assessment for Brazilian citizens abroad and enable better-informed lending decisions across borders.” 

Kaido Saar, Founder and CEO of Mifundo: 

“Banks are already serving international customers, but their credit data infrastructure remains largely domestic. This creates blind spots in underwriting. Access to verified Brazilian credit data allows banks to assess nationals from that country based on actual financial behaviour rather than assumptions driven by missing information.”

FF NEWS TAKE

Mifundo is quietly building the “SWIFT network for credit scores.” Having already stitched together a footprint covering 20+ European countries and over 70% of the continent’s population, this expansion into Brazil represents a major strategic leap into the global arena. Kaido Saar and his team are tackling a highly lucrative niche: Europe’s cross-border lending market is valued at an estimated €719 billion, yet it remains severely restricted by archaic, siloed infrastructure.

The timing of this corridor is brilliant. In 2026, compliance with Europe’s revised Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2) requires lenders to conduct rigorous, exhaustive creditworthiness checks using all relevant information—including non-domestic data. While many institutions have looked to Open Banking transactional data to patch these holes, raw bank statements only show current cash flow, not long-term credit discipline. By providing bureau-grade historical files from Equifax’s massive Brazilian database, Mifundo gives risk teams a legally defensible, multi-dimensional view of an applicant. For global fintechs, this cross-border architecture is the playbook for modern, mobile-first financial inclusion.