Banking integration: overview
Bank statements and balances are a core input for reconciliations and closing — and the most common source of delays when they depend on manual downloads from online banking. The platform offers three complementary ways to automatically receive data from your bank accounts. This article presents each one and helps you choose; the details are in the articles in this collection.
Integration methods
Open Finance — direct connection with the bank through the Brazilian standard for authorized data sharing. You select the banks in the Integrations menu and complete the authorization (consent); statements and balances then start being imported automatically. This is the recommended path when the bank is available.
Bank VAN — exchange of financial files (statements, returns, payment files) through a communication network between banks and companies. Files delivered by the VAN reach the platform through the storage method (e.g. SFTP) and are automatically collected by the Source Directory. Recommended when the bank is not in Open Finance or when operations are already based on banking files at scale. It is enabled as a service by the Dattos team.
Direct bank API — some banks offer their own APIs for customers. In these cases, the integration can be built with the API Rest step, as a custom integration — see the article "Custom integrations via API Rest and SQL connectors".
How to choose
Is the bank in Open Finance? Start with it — no files, no infrastructure, just the account holder’s consent.
Operation with many banks and financial files (statements, payments, returns)? VAN centralizes file exchange with all of them, with automatic delivery via storage.
Does the bank offer its own API and does the team want fine-grained control? Custom integration via API Rest.
The methods can coexist: it is common to use Open Finance for the main banks and VAN for the others.
In total, the platform connects to more than 300 institutions — banks, acquirers, digital wallets, brokerages, registries, and benefits administrators. The complete list, with the available method for each institution, is in the article "Banking institutions by integration method".
Where to continue
Banking institutions by integration method (complete list).
Bank integration via Open Finance.
Bank integration via VAN.
Custom integrations via API Rest and SQL connectors.
Connect external storages (SFTP, SharePoint, OneDrive).