OBS: You will need a CPF to open a Brazilian bank account, if you do not have one, please go to this guide first and obtain a CPF and then return to this guide to continue the process.
Where can I open my Brazilian bank account?
It can be really difficult to open a Brazilian bank account for a foreigner, this is the exact reason why I am writing this post, to help you go through this process easily and quickly.
The bank we're going to be using is Banco Rendimento, we will be opening a CDE (Conta de Domiciliado no Exterior) in the mentioned bank completely online with the default documents that you would need for opening a bank account in most countries around the world.
Let's get started, you can open your CDE account in Banco Rendimento following this link.
2. Documents & Application Process
At the bottom of the website, you will see a form where it says "Abrir CDE", fill out this form and you will receive an email with the further instructions that I will guide you through.
OBS: Official Banco Rendimento emails for this process are <naoresponda@rendimento.com.br> and <cadastrodigital@rendimento.com.br>, any other emails are attempt of scam or phishing attack.
Email will contain a welcome message and a link to open your account, most of the Banco Rendimento forms and emails have English translation, so that should help you through the process.
Following the link, you will be asked a lot of information, some of which are:
-CPF
-Residential address and country
-Phone number
-Monthly income
-Monthly expenses
-Upload of utility bill with your residential address on it
-Upload of selfie
-Upload of your passport
-OPTIONAL: Proof of income, you can upload it later
After this, you will receive another email to sign the contract with the bank and after that, you will be put in the process of bank account creation and will be emailed within 3 business days whether or not your application was accepted.
3. Basic & Premium Plan
Banco Rendimento CDE offers two plans, depending on what you will need, you can pick between Basic or Premium plan:
As you can see, even in the basic plan there are some fees for transactions, which might be good for a large sum of money since they're at a fixed rate per transaction, however, if you are not interested in paying fees and having your own Brazilian bank account, you can open a Wise (TED) or Paysend (PIX) account as a foreigner, check out my How to Pay with PIX as a Foreigner guide.
OBS: PIX has a QR code you can scan to pay if you don't have a vendor's cpf or just want to pay faster, also CDE offers boleto and QR code scanning for paying utility bills if you own real estate in Brazil or paying any other form of boletos.
4. Daily & Annual Limits
Daily limit of PIX transactions is R$50.000, which you will need to increase by yourself inside the Banco Rendimento app and since it's a larger sum of money, you will need to respond to an email from their customer support to confirm that it was you indeed who asked for this change.
Be careful because Banco Rendimento has separated limits during the day and during the night using the Brasilia time zone, so that means if you've changed the limit to R$50.000 during the day, the same limit is not applied at night (exact hours are written inside the app), so make sure to change both if you want your money available during any time of the 24 hours.
As for the annual limits, I was told that any payment received above R$100.000 in a year might be subject to some questions by the Brazilian government, I've never put this sum of money on my CDE so I wouldn't know the process, but customer support agent said that they will usually just ask source and proof of money that you've deposited or received, so as long as you're not doing anything illegal, you should be able to prove the money coming in and have no issues with continuing your process of investing, buying a property or any other high value transactions.
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU NOW HAVE A BRAZILIAN BANK ACCOUNT!
Has anyone tried this independently and it worked?