Productive and Oriented Microcredit and Digital Financial Inclusion: legal challenges and regulatory opportunities in the brazilian financial system

Abstract

This article examines the legal challenges and regulatory gaps arising from the digitalization of Brazil’s National Program for Productive and Oriented Microcredit (PNMPO), initiated by Law No. 13.999/2020 and further developed by Law 15.364/2026. It is based on the hypothesis that the quantitative expansion of access to productive and oriented microcredit (MPO) has not been accompanied by equivalent qualitative legal protection for borrowers, exposing them to risks of algorithmic exclusion, over-indebtedness without specific legal safeguards, and disruption of guidance when digital monitoring relies on data shared through Open Finance. The article identifies four priority regulatory
challenges: (i) the lack of definition of the minimum content and effectiveness criteria for guidance provided in digital environments; (ii) insufficient regulatory parameters for transparency, explainability, and review of automated credit decisions under Article 20 of the Brazilian General Data Protection Law (LGPD); (iii) a protection gap affecting microentrepreneur
MPO borrowers between the regime established by Law 14.181/2021 and the instruments of business law; and (iv) the need to reconcile Open Finance data sharing with the continuity of the guidance and monitoring that characterize MPO. The methodology is bibliographic and normative, complemented by the analysis of secondary data extracted from official reports, with a primary temporal focus on the period from 2020 to 2026.