Transparency Card is turning mobile wallets into a tool against corruption.

It's an innovation that sends real-time notifications directly to phone wallets whenever a Brazilian politician spends taxpayers' money.

It doesn't need an app, or a webapp. It uses a function native to phones - the mobile wallet.

Just add politicians' cards to yours to keep track of their spending.

After all, public money is your money. You should know how it's spent.

Brazil loses about $40 Billion per year to corrupt politician spending.

Although Brazilians have the constitutional right to access information about politicians' use of public funds, the data is complex to monitor, leaving room for corrupts to act without being watched.

So amid the most critical and polarized elections in Brazil's history, with a significant amount of fake news, and the threat to transparency posed by President Bolsonaro's secrecy orders to hide his own spending data, Congresso em Foco, an independent Brazilian digital news portal, came to us with a brief:

How to provide quality information to voters so that they can push for transparency in Brazil?

Public money is people's money. So Congresso em Foco created an innovation that sends real-time notifications directly to mobile wallets whenever a politician spends taxpayer's money: the Transparency Card.

It's connected in real-time with multiple open but complex government databases.

Designed to be as seamless as possible, it mimics the familiar way people track their personal credit card spending. That's why it doesn't need an app, nor a webapp — just a function native to phones, the mobile wallet. Which turns every Brazilian with a phone into a potential watchdog over public money.

For example, if a politician spends $23,000 on a private jet, Brazilians receive a real-time push notification. With this information in hand, they can push for more transparency, questioning each expense.

To track the expenses of more than 500 politicians, visit cartaodatransparencia.com and add the cards of the politicians you want to watch to your wallet.

Our target: Brazilian voters, 18 to 70 years old.

Months before the 2022 elections, "Corruption" was the leading topic in social media conversations (source: Twitter Market Insights & Analytics Survey), so we tapped into the subject from the perspective of transparency.

The tool is non-partisan. It has information from all politicians, no exceptions. To cut through the loud noises of a polarized election, we opted to deliver the information via mobile phones wallets — using push notifications as a media format to emulate the familiar way of tracking credit card transactions.

Since public money is people's money, we had a clear call to action: "Feel in your wallet how public money is spent."

All data used to develop this project come from official sources of the Brazilian government, as public money expenditures made by politicians are considered open data by Brazilian law but have extremely complicated access.

Under Brazilian law, politicians' spending data is open — but intentionally complex and hard to access.

So we created a system connected in real-time with multiple government databases, gathering, simplifying, and organizing unstructured data of over 500 politicians — without partisan bias.

Then, it delivers the information in a simple way: via real-time push notifications directly to the phone's wallet.

Just visit cartaodatransparencia.com, choose the politicians you want to watch, and add their cards.

On the website, accessing politicians' spending history is also easy, just like any regular credit card. This provides even more transparency, becoming a valuable resource for understanding or questioning each politician's spending behavior.

An integrated campaign with film, digital media, and social content launched the project 4 weeks before the national elections (September 2022) when the president's secrecy orders threatened transparency.

Transparency Card is an ongoing project — ever-evolving and globally scalable.

So far, more than 430K active cards are in mobile wallets, and 20MM notifications have been sent.

Congresso em Foco simplified and democratized access to complex data, transforming every Brazilian with a phone into a potential watchdog over public money - becoming even more relevant as a media channel.

According to Contagious, Transparency Card "Empowers a nation to monitor politicians and not blindly trust those in power."

The innovation served as an investigative source for journalists who wrote news based on the expenses exposed by the platform.

We received support from one of the biggest Brazilian activist movements, Projetemos, a group that makes nationwide wall projections on social and political issues, spreading the word about the project in more than 15 state capitals.

As an innovation that exposes politicians, Transparency Card has faced several attempts at hacker attacks, which was expected due to the messy Brazilian political scenario.

Transparency Card tackled a system designed to hide corrupt politicians' spending data.

More than collecting public money spending data from numerous sources and simplifying them, it made Brazilians feel - in their wallets - how public money is being spent,democratizing information that is a constitutional right under Brazilian law - but which sadly still needs to be fulfilled with due transparency.

Using a PassKit integration API to deliver information through user wallets has allowed us to create a digital experience similar to top banks promoting continuous public money monitoring.People are already accustomed to tracking their spending through real-time phone notifications, so this feature encourages constant vigilance.

The Transparency Card collected and assembled a vast amount of data on spending by Brazilian politicians in recent years.It provides real-time surveillance through cards and offers a spending history tool for better transparency — a valuable resource for understanding and questioning each politician's spending

The Transparency Card was launched in September 2022, weeks before the national elections — In Brazil, election years are historically years in which politicians spend larger amounts of public money in questionable or even corrupt ways.

This particular election was even more tense when it came to that matter, because the president's party had passed a law of 100 years of secrecy, protecting his information from going public and causing great dissatisfaction amongst the population - everyone was asking for more transparency.

By curating and bringing this data to citizens, we empowered them to respond to the lack of transparency and push for change - that did come after the elections, when the new elected president repealed the 100 year secrecy law imposed by the former president.