⚠ Losing Share to the Banks' Own AcquirersModerate threat

StoneCo (STNE) — threat to the moat

Rede gained five points and StoneCo lost two, because a bank-owned acquirer can price the terminal at nothing and make its money on the account.

Scale in acquiring is supposed to compound. In the twelve months to January 2026 it went the other way for StoneCo: independent tracking put Cielo at 28 percent of the market, PagBank at 26, Itau's Rede at 25 having gained five points, and StoneCo at 22, having lost two1.

Brazilian acquiring share, Jan 2026 (and the year's move)Cielo28% +2ppPagBank26% +2ppRede (Itau)25% +5ppStoneCo22% -2ppGetnet (Santander)5% -2ppShares sum above 100% because merchants keep several acquirers at once.
Rede did not win by building a better terminal. It won because Itau can price one at nothing.

The reason matters more than the number. Rede did not win by building a better terminal. It won because Itau can offer a merchant an acquiring rate that makes no money, and recover it on the current account, the payroll service and the loan. StoneCo has no branch network and no deposit franchise of comparable size to subsidise from, which means it has to be paid for acquiring itself.

What limits the damage is that the merchant StoneCo serves is not the merchant a large bank is built to serve. A restaurant with two hundred thousand reais of monthly volume gets a relationship manager from StoneCo and a call centre from a bank, and that difference is what the whole distribution argument rests on. Active payment clients still rose to 4.8 million from 4.2 million in a year2, so the base is growing even as the share of volume drifts.

The thing to watch is not the share figure, which measures a market Stone deliberately does not serve all of. It is TPV growth against the industry's: Brazilian card volume grew 10.1 percent in 2025 to R$4.5 trillion. Growing more slowly than that, for more than a couple of quarters, would mean the distribution advantage has stopped paying for the price disadvantage.

References
  1. Third-party estimateIn the year to January 2026 Cielo held 28% of Brazilian acquiring, PagBank 26%, Rede 25% after gaining five points, and StoneCo 22% after losing two; 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 ↗
  2. ReportedActive payment clients rose to 4,803.5 thousand from 4,172.7 thousand in a year.
    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 ↗
Sources
Generated September 23, 2026