Rede and Getnet: The Acquirers Owned by BanksThin moat
StoneCo (STNE) — moat facet
An acquirer owned by a bank does not need acquiring to make money; StoneCo's answer is not to out-price one but to become one.
The largest single move in the Brazilian acquiring market recently was made by Rede, Itau's processor, which gained roughly five percentage points of share in the twelve months to January 2026 to reach about 25 percent. StoneCo lost two, to 221.
It is worth being clear about the mechanism, because it is not one StoneCo can copy. An acquirer owned by a large bank does not need the acquiring business to make money. It needs the merchant's relationship: the current account where the settlement lands, the payroll it processes, the working-capital line it sells, the investment product it cross-sells to the owner. Acquiring is the hook. Priced as a hook, it can be sold at or below cost indefinitely, and no independent competitor can match that price and survive.
StoneCo's counter is to become the bank rather than to out-price one — 3.6 million banking active clients and R$11.1 billion of retail deposits2, so that the settlement lands in a StoneCo account rather than in Itau's. That is the correct strategy and it is a long one, competing against branch networks and brand trust built over a century.
What protects StoneCo in the meantime is the merchant it serves. A shopkeeper with a genuine problem wants somebody to answer the phone, and the bank-owned processors are structurally worse at that; StoneCo's proprietary and franchised hubs exist precisely to be better at it.
Watch StoneCo's TPV growth against Brazilian card volume, which rose 10.1 percent in 2025 to R$4.5 trillion. Losing share while growing with the market is competition. Growing more slowly than the market is losing.
Rede's five-point gain was the largest move in the market, and it was bought with a subsidy StoneCo cannot match — the terminal priced as a hook for the current account, the payroll mandate and the loan. StoneCo's counter, becoming the merchant's bank itself, is the right one and is years from parity with a branch network built over a century.
Itau's processor made the largest gain in the market, bought with a subsidy an independent cannot match: the terminal priced as a hook for the current account and the loan. StoneCo's counter is to become the bank — 3.6m banking clients and R$11.1bn of deposits — and that is a long campaign against a century-old branch network.
Source: UBS BB acquirer tracking, January 2026 ↗- Third-party estimateRede gained roughly five percentage points to about 25% in the year to January 2026 while StoneCo lost two to 22%; Brazilian card volume rose 10.1% in 2025 to R$4.5 trillion.NeoFeed / UBS BB acquirer tracking, January 2026 — Cielo held first place with 28% market share, up 2 percentage points year on year; PagBank second with 26%, up 2 points; Itau's Rede third with 25%, the largest gain in the market at 5 points; StoneCo lost 2 points to 22%; Santander's Getnet fell to 9% by user count and 5% by transaction volume. Total Brazilian card transaction volume rose 10.1% in 2025 to R$4.5 trillion — January 2026 · publ. 2026 · source ↗
- ReportedStoneCo reported more than 3.6 million banking active clients and R$11,091.0 million of retail deposits.StoneCo Ltd. Form 20-F for FY2025 (CIK 1745431) — active payment clients of 4,803.5 thousand at 31 December 2025, against 4,172.7 thousand in 2024 and 3,522.1 thousand in 2023; TPV of R$560.9 billion, against R$516.2 billion and R$438.3 billion; revenue of R$14,153.8 million and adjusted net income from continuing operations of R$2,477.2 million; more than 3.6 million banking active clients, the majority of whom are also payment clients; retail deposits of R$11,091.0 million against R$8,704.8 million and R$6,119.5 million; a credit portfolio of R$2,836 million with expected credit losses of R$389.7 million, against R$1,207.6 million and R$144.5 million a year earlier; clients divided into MSMBs (micro-merchants and SMBs) and Key Accounts, 'comprised of platform services and sub-acquirers'; StoneCo became in 2017 the first non-banking entity authorised by the Central Bank to operate as an Acquirer through a payments-institution licence, and is among the six largest players by total card volume per ABECS; distribution through proprietary and franchised hubs sold on 'service differentiation as the main driver', digital channels, and more than 500 Strategic Partners at December 2025; per the Central Bank, Pix's share of the total number of transactions rose from 1% in Q4 2020 to 52% in H1 2025 and its share of monetary volume from 1% to more than 26%; the filing warns that 'the concentration of our clients by geography and economic sector may increase our risk' and that the company experiences churn from business closures and account transfers; interest rates directly affect both revenue generation and cost of funds, most third-party funding being linked to the Brazilian interbank rate; StoneCo's own analysis notes that US MSMB take rates have been stable over five years despite penetration around 120% of consumption, and finds no indication of saturation-driven price reductions in Brazilian cities with low cash usage — FY2025 · publ. 2026 · source ↗