South America: Technology

One of the biggest mistakes when building a fintech is assuming that financial regulation is only a concern for companies that aspire to become banks. The reality is quite different. Many of today's most successful fintech companies began operating entirely outside the regulatory perimeter. They built innovative technology, validated their business models, acquired customers, and generated revenue without holding a financial services license.

Tokenization has become one of those words that turns up everywhere in finance and rarely gets explained well. Strip away the hype and the idea is simple. You take rights over an asset, a piece of real estate, a loan, a stream of receivables, and you turn those rights into a digital token that lives on a shared electronic ledger, usually a blockchain.

El 23 de marzo de 2026, las Islas Bahamas promulgaron la Usufruct Interest Act, 2026 (Ley No. 9 de 2026), estableciendo el primer marco legal integral para el usufructo en esta jurisdicción.

Brazil's Committee on Industry, Commerce, and Services has issued a favorable opinion on legislation addressing patent ownership for AI-assisted inventions. The proposed amendment to the Brazilian Patent Statute would establish that patent rights for inventions developed with artificial intelligence assistance belong to the individual or legal entity providing the economic or technical means for development, while maintaining that AI systems themselves cannot hold patent rights due to lack of legal personho

Regulatory data protection has become an essential infrastructure for innovation in regulated sectors, particularly in Brazilian agriculture.

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the legal sector in Brazil, prompting unprecedented regulatory responses from key institutions. The Brazilian Bar Association and National Council of Justice have issued comprehensive frameworks addressing ethical AI use, data protection, algorithmic transparency, and human oversight in legal practice and judicial proceedings.

A Brazilian court recently sanctioned lawyers for embedding hidden "prompt injection" commands in white text within their court filing, designed to manipulate AI systems reviewing the document.

Brazil's advertising self-regulation body CONAR has released comprehensive new guidelines governing digital influencer marketing, significantly expanding the definition of influencer advertising and establishing stricter transparency requirements. The updated framework addresses emerging challenges including AI-generated content, child participation protocols, and the distinction between organic and commercial social media posts.

The Brazilian Federal Council of Medicine (“CFM”) issued, on February 27, 2026, Resolution No. 2,454/2026 (the “Resolution”), addressing the use of artificial intelligence (“AI”) in medicine.