The Merchant Who Became a DepositorWide moat
StoneCo (STNE) — moat facet
A terminal can be swapped in an afternoon; an account holding the payroll, the suppliers and the working-capital line cannot — and the deposit base nearly doubled in two years.
The most consequential change in StoneCo's customer base is not its size. It is that a large part of it stopped being a payments customer and started being a banking one.
The company ended 2025 with more than 3.6 million banking active clients, the majority of whom are also payment clients, and R$11,091.0 million of retail deposits — up from R$8,704.8 million a year earlier and R$6,119.5 million the year before that1. In two years the deposit base has nearly doubled.
That changes what a customer is. A merchant who rents a terminal can accept a rival's terminal tomorrow and does not need to tell anyone. A merchant whose sales settle into a StoneCo account, whose suppliers are paid from it, whose staff are paid from it and whose working-capital line is secured against the flow through it is not going to move for twenty basis points. It is the same distinction that separates a bank customer from a shopper, and it arrived without StoneCo having to buy a single branch.
It also solves the funding problem. Deposits from merchants are cheaper than institutional funding linked to the interbank rate, which directly improves the economics of the prepayment and credit businesses that generate most of the profit.
The vulnerability is competitive rather than structural: this is precisely the ground where Nubank and the incumbent banks are strongest.
Watch deposits per banking client. Client numbers can be grown with incentives; balances are what the merchant actually decided.
Retail deposits went from R$6,119.5 million to R$8,704.8 million to R$11,091.0 million across three years, with more than 3.6 million banking active clients. Each real of that is both cheaper funding for the credit and prepayment businesses and a strand of a relationship a merchant cannot swap out in an afternoon.
Deposits went R$6,119.5m to R$8,704.8m to R$11,091.0m across three years, and the majority of banking clients are also payment clients. That is cheaper funding than interbank-linked borrowing and a relationship a merchant cannot swap in an afternoon. Watch the balance per client, not the client count.
Source: StoneCo FY2025 Form 20-F ↗- ReportedRetail deposits were R$11,091.0 million at end-2025, against R$8,704.8 million and R$6,119.5 million in the two prior years, across more than 3.6 million banking active clients.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 ↗