⚠ Seeing Less of the Merchant Every YearModerate threat
StoneCo (STNE) — threat to the moat
Falling Stone volume and a merchant moving volume to Rede are opposite credit signals that look identical in the data.
The credit thesis rests on observation: StoneCo can see a merchant's card sales in real time, so it can lend against a trend rather than against a set of accounts prepared by the borrower.
The assumption inside that is that StoneCo sees most of the sales. Brazilian merchants routinely run terminals from more than one acquirer — which is why the industry's published market shares sum well above a hundred percent — so what StoneCo actually observes is a share of a business, and it does not know reliably what share. A merchant whose Stone volume is falling might be shrinking, or might be moving volume to Rede for a better rate this month. Those are opposite credit signals and they look identical in the data.
Pix makes it harder again. Instant payments settle directly into an account and, unless that account is StoneCo's, they are invisible. As Pix grows toward and past half of all Brazilian transactions, the portion of a merchant's revenue an acquirer can see shrinks even when nothing about the relationship changes.
The defence is the banking business, and it is the right one: 3.6 million banking active clients and R$11.1 billion of retail deposits1 mean StoneCo increasingly sees the account rather than just the terminal, which restores the view Pix removed.
Watch the share of credit clients who also bank with StoneCo. Lending on a partial view of a small business is what the industry does badly, and it is what 2021 was.
- ReportedStoneCo reported more than 3.6 million banking active clients and R$11,091.0 million of retail deposits at end-2025.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 ↗