Doing Business in Brazil: Market Entry, GTM Strategy & Growth Potential

The population of Brazil is 213,562,667, and is growing at the rate of 0.34%. The GDP per capita, which represents the potential spending power of the people, is $24,428, measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis to allow comparison with other countries.

88.46% of Brazil’s population lives in urban areas. 63.77% of the population is of working age (15-59). 84.92% of the population has internet access and 68.39% has 5G mobile coverage. These factors are important for digital-first businesses to keep in mind.

The Accuracast International Growth Index ranks Brazil #18 overall for market attractiveness. The country’s rank changed -3 places, representing a fall from last year’s position.

How we can help you grow in Brazil:

Accuracast offers a comprehensive range of international digital marketing services to support brands looking to grow their presence in Brazil. Whether you need an international SEO agency, an international advertising agency, or an international social media marketing agency specialising in Brazil, we’ve got you covered.

How Digitally Mature is the Market in Brazil

The digital search demand score for Brazil is 45.53.

This is a tighter alignment than most other markets in this series show. This fits Brazil’s profile as one of the largest and most established digital economies in Latin America, ranking fourth globally by number of digital buyers, where search behaviour and actual buying intent tend to move together more predictably than in markets where social discovery dominates.

Go-To-Market Strategy Considerations for Brazil

The purchasing power score for Brazil is 56.41, and the country scores 75.78 for digital readiness.

This points to a large, digitally engaged population with real but uneven spending power, Brazil is a country of significant income inequality, so national averages can mask sharply different addressable markets between major metro areas and the rest of the country. Brazilian e-commerce has grown fast regardless, up 41% in 2020 and 27% in 2021 during the pandemic-driven surge, and Latin America’s digital market overall is projected to nearly double by 2026, with Brazil as the region’s largest single contributor.

Financial & payment infrastructure

In terms of financial infrastructure, Brazil scores 62.09.

The prominent payment feature here is Pix, the Central Bank of Brazil’s free, instant payment system launched in 2020, which processed 63.4 billion transactions worth roughly USD 4.6 trillion in 2024 alone. Pix now holds around 40% share of Brazil’s e-commerce payment volume, on track to overtake credit cards (currently around 36 to 37%) within the next couple of years. Merchant fees on Pix run as low as 0.33% compared with 2 to 5% typically charged on card transactions.

For many first-time online shoppers, Pix has effectively been the on-ramp into digital commerce altogether, with EBANX reporting that 80 to 95% of new customers on its partner platforms made their first purchase using Pix rather than a card. Skipping Pix at checkout in Brazil is not a minor omission, it is akin to excluding a large share of the addressable market outright.

Monetary policy has become highly restrictive in recent years, weighing on consumption and investment.

Regulatory & business setup friction

From a business expansion point of view, Brazil scores 54.03 for regulatory complexity and legal restrictions. This is reverse-scored, meaning the higher the score, the easier it is to navigate local regulation.

Data protection is governed by the LGPD (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados), enforced by the ANPD (Autoridade Nacional de Proteção de Dados). The regulatory environment shifted meaningfully in 2026: Law 15.352/2026 upgraded the ANPD from an authority into a full regulatory agency with its own budget, career structure, and greater administrative and financial autonomy, and the agency has been opening far more enforcement proceedings in recent months than in prior years combined.

Separately, Brazil and the EU reached a mutual data protection adequacy decision in January 2026, which removes the need for additional contractual safeguards when transferring personal data between the two blocs, a meaningful simplification for any business with EU ties operating in Brazil.

The score of 40.58 indicates the costs and friction associated with setting up a business presence in Brazil.

This market bears what’s locally known as “Custo Brasil” (the Brazil cost), a long-standing reputation for bureaucratic complexity. The standard vehicle for foreign investors is the Ltda – or its single-member version, the SLU – and while some Brazilian states have digitised parts of the process, the full end-to-end process, including document legalisation, a mandatory Brazil-resident legal representative, tax registration (CNPJ), and opening a functioning bank account, more realistically takes 20 to 45 days for a straightforward setup and can extend to around 180 days and roughly 22 procedural steps for more complex foreign-investor structures. This is in stark contrast to the national average processing time for the public-sector portion of registration, which was around 21 hours in a 2025 government survey.

A Brazil-resident legal representative and registered local address are both mandatory, and documents from abroad typically need apostille or consular legalisation before they’re accepted.

Major indirect tax reform is being implemented, which will simplify the tax-filing burden on companies.

Brazil market attractiveness change

Compared to last year, the overall International Growth Index score for Brazil has changed 1.14 points, causing the country to go -3 places from 2025, dropping to rank #18 in 2026.

This market is worth considering, particularly since Brazil’s fundamentals – a large and growing digital population, strong Pix-driven payment infrastructure, an EU data adequacy decision – all point in a positive direction. Foreign investment in the country has risen, as has the GDP for the past three years, though GDP growth does seem to be slowing (3.4% in 2024, 2.3% in 2025, and forecast to be 1.6% in 2026).

The drop may reflect other markets improving faster in this cycle, rather than Brazil’s own position weakening in absolute terms, but it’s a signal to revisit before finalising any near-term entry timeline.

Most Popular Social Media Platforms in Brazil:

1. WhatsApp
2. Facebook
3. YouTube
4. Instagram
5. LinkedIn
6. TikTok
7. Kuaishou (Kwai)
8. Telegram
9. X
10. Pinterest

WhatsApp is installed on virtually every smartphone, and serve’s as the country’s primary communications, customer service and commerce engine. Brazil is one of the few countries where users can make direct payments and purchases within WhatsApp.

The official national language is Portuguese. English is spoken by roughly 5% of the population, and proficiency is low but improving, though the 2025 EF English Proficiency Index notes that speaking English remains the weakest skill nationally and that proficiency has stagnated or declined among younger adults specifically.

Marketing teams should strongly consider localising website content for search, and social media and advertising content into Portuguese to engage the local audience effectively, with fully native Brazilian Portuguese (not European Portuguese) as the baseline expectation, rather than an optional refinement, given how limited English fluency is outside major business hubs.

What Are the Risks of Expanding into Brazil

While new market expansion can be exciting, it is important to also consider the risks when entering a market like Brazil.

The main risks businesses face when entering Brazil are:

• A genuinely demanding company formation process that can take months, and requires a Brazil-resident legal representative, apostilled foreign documents, and significant professional support to navigate
• The newly-empowered and more active data protection regulator following the ANPD’s 2026 upgrade to full agency status
• Pronounced regional income inequality that can make a single national go-to-market approach less effective than in more economically uniform markets
• Payments landscape so heavily weighted toward Pix that any checkout not supporting it risks losing a large share of first-time digital buyers specifically.

How Does Brazil Compare to Other Top Markets?