Four Point Eight Million, and Not One That MattersWide moat
StoneCo (STNE) — moat facet
Diversification across 4.8 million customers who share one country, one currency and one policy rate is diversification of name rather than of exposure.
Read StoneCo's annual report looking for the customer-concentration paragraph that most companies in this collection have to write, and it is not there. No single customer, no ten-percent threshold, no largest-buyer figure. With 4,803.5 thousand active payment clients settling R$560.9 billion between them, no individual merchant is material1.
Set against the rest of this file, that is worth pausing on. CoreWeave has a customer at two-thirds of revenue, Bloom Energy has one at 43 percent that is also a related party, Marvell has a distributor at 37 percent. StoneCo has none of that exposure and never will, because the smallest customer type in commerce cannot become a concentration.
The cost of the arrangement is that it produces the opposite risk. These are Brazilian micro-merchants and small businesses, and StoneCo's own filing is direct about what that means: it experiences churn from business closures, transfers of accounts and declines in same-store sales, and it warns that the concentration of clients by geography and economic sector may increase risk. Diversification across 4.8 million customers who share one country, one currency, one policy rate and one consumer is diversification of name rather than of exposure.
The active-client count is also a demanding definition to grow: it counts merchants who transacted in the last ninety days. Every quarter, a share of the base simply stops.
Watch net additions rather than the total. A base growing from 3.5 million to 4.8 million in two years is winning merchants faster than Brazil's small businesses are failing, and that comparison is the whole story.
The absence of customer concentration is structural: the smallest customer type in commerce cannot become a concentration. What moves is the count, and it has moved from 3,522.1 thousand to 4,803.5 thousand in two years — StoneCo is winning merchants faster than Brazil's small businesses are failing.
The metric counts merchants who transacted in the preceding ninety days, so every quarter a share of the base simply stops. Watch net additions rather than the total: a base growing this fast is winning merchants faster than Brazil's small businesses are failing, and that comparison is the whole story.
Source: StoneCo FY2025 Form 20-F ↗- ReportedActive payment clients rose from 3,522.1 thousand in 2023 to 4,172.7 thousand in 2024 and 4,803.5 thousand in 2025, on a definition counting merchants who transacted in the preceding 90 days.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 ↗