⚠ Riding a Rail You Do Not OwnHigh threat
StoneCo (STNE) — threat to the moat
Carrying Pix converts a revenue problem into a smaller revenue problem — the rules, the pricing and the roadmap belong to the central bank.
StoneCo's response to Pix has been to carry it: QR-code volume runs through the same terminals, gets counted in TPV, and generates data the credit business uses. That is the right response, and it should not be confused with owning the rail.
Pix is built and operated by Brazil's central bank. Its rules, its pricing, its participation requirements and its feature set are all set by an institution whose stated objective is to reduce the cost of payments for Brazilians — an objective in permanent tension with an acquirer's revenue model. Every extension the Central Bank has shipped, and each one competitors have built on top, converts a transaction that used to carry a card fee into one that carries very little.
StoneCo's annual report puts the trajectory plainly: from 1 percent of Brazilian transactions in late 2020 to 52 percent by the first half of 2025, and from 1 percent to more than 26 percent of monetary volume1. That is not a niche taking share at the edges.
What StoneCo can charge for is the surrounding service — reconciliation, the terminal, the account, the credit that the data supports. Those are real businesses. They are also thinner than an interchange-plus take rate, and they can be offered by anyone who connects to the same rail, which is everyone.
The number to watch is revenue per real of TPV as the Pix share of that TPV rises. If it holds, StoneCo is selling something Pix does not provide. If it falls in step, it is being disintermediated politely.
- ReportedPix was developed by Brazil's Central Bank and began operating in November 2020; its share of transactions reached 52% by H1 2025, and the Central Bank and competitors have continued extending its scope.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 ↗