Brazil is piloting dWallet, a digital wallet program that lets users manage, own, and profit from their data, the first such nationwide initiative in the world
Brazil is piloting dWallet, a project that lets citizens earn money from their data. It is ahead of similar U.S-based initiatives. Bluesky: @ericgoldman . Mastodon: @Khrys@mamot.fr . X: @restofworld and @rinachandran . LinkedIn: Rina Chandran . Forums: Slashdot Bluesky: Eric Goldman / @ericgoldman : In the late 1990s, there was a lot of hype about “infomediaries” that would broker data exchanges between advertisers & consumers. Numerous entrepreneurs (unsuccessfully) tried to implement them. — In 2025, Brazil is trying it again restofworld.org/2025/brazil- ... Mastodon: @Khrys@mamot.fr : In a world first, Brazilians will soon be able to sell their digital data — https://restofworld.org/... Brazil is piloting dWallet, a project that lets citizens earn money from their data. It is ahead of similar U.S-based initiatives. X: @restofworld : Companies are already tracking your data. What if you could make money from it? https://restofworld.org/... @rinachandran : Brazil is testing a scheme that allows users to cash in on their digital footprint — the first such nationwide initiative in the world with @DrumWaveInc reports @gdarosl for @restofworld. https://restofworld.org/... LinkedIn: Rina Chandran : Companies already use your data. Shouldn't you get something for it? Brazil is testing a scheme that would allow users to cash in on their digital footprint … Forums: Slashdot : Brazil Tests Letting Citizens Earn Money From Data in Their Digital Footprint
Context & Ripple Effects
Brazil’s dWallet pilot revives a user-compensation model that earlier U.S. policy proposals struggled to make workable, especially around valuing personal data for payment. It shifts the idea from a platform obligation to a national program centered on citizen control.
Brazil has already built experience with broadly used public digital-payment infrastructure through Pix’s early national rollout. That makes dWallet notable as an attempt to attach data rights and potential compensation to a wallet-like interface rather than treat data governance as an abstract policy goal.
First-order effects
- Participants in the pilot gain a mechanism to manage, claim ownership of, and potentially earn from their data; dWallet becomes the immediate intermediary for those choices.
- Organizations seeking access to participating users’ data face a more explicit permission and compensation layer than a conventional collection model.
Second-order effects
- The pilot tests whether individual data payments can be priced and administered at scale, directly addressing the valuation problem that constrained earlier data-dividend proposals.
- If participation is meaningful, platforms and data buyers operating in Brazil may need to adapt consent flows and data-acquisition practices to work with a user-controlled wallet.
Third-order effects
- A workable national model could move data rights from notice-and-consent policy toward portable infrastructure that lets people authorize and monetize reuse of their information.
- The larger uncertainty is whether compensation can be sustained without making participation confusing or concentrating bargaining power in the wallet operator; the pilot will test that trade-off.
The trend: dWallet is part of a broader shift toward treating personal data as a user-governed asset, supported by interoperable digital-rights infrastructure rather than platform terms alone.