Mercado Pago Says It Has Passed Caixa in Brazilian Cards — Without a Banking Licence

Mercado Pago Brazil says it has passed Caixa to become the country’s sixth-largest card issuer, with net revenue of US$2.2 billion in a single quarter — and still no banking licence.

Mercado Pago Brazil billed US$2.2 billion in net revenue in the second quarter and now ranks sixth among the country’s card issuers, ahead of the state-owned Caixa Econômica Federal. The claim came from the unit’s senior vice-president on Friday morning, and it lands while Brazil’s traditional banks are closing branches at a rate of roughly sixteen a week.

What Mercado Pago Brazil actually said

André Chaves, who runs Mercado Pago in Brazil, put it plainly in an interview with NeoFeed on Friday morning: “We’ve overtaken almost every player I’d call mid-size. We’re behind the four big banks and the roxinho — Nubank. We even overtook Caixa Econômica.”

The measure is card-issuer ranking, drawn from the company’s own numbers alongside CardMonitor’s annual league table. Mercado Pago has climbed nine places since 2023 to sixth. Worth being clear about what that is and is not: CardMonitor’s underlying data is not public, Caixa has published nothing comparable, and Caixa has not responded. This is an executive’s claim, and it should be read as one.

The revenue figure is firmer because it comes out of MercadoLibre’s quarterly results. Brazil billed US$2.2 billion in net revenue in the second quarter, up 63 percent, and now accounts for more than half of everything Mercado Pago earns across Latin America.

The cards are winning customers and costing margin

Mercado Pago issued 2.6 million new credit cards in the quarter, up from 1.6 million a year before. Cards now make up 47 percent of the group credit portfolio, against 43 percent twelve months ago.

That growth has a price. The net interest margin on cards after credit losses went from breakeven a year ago to minus 2.5 percent. Analysts at XP read that as dilution from new customers rather than a credit problem, and the arrears support them: 7.0 percent across the whole book and 4.6 percent on cards, close to historic lows.

The logic is that the card pulls people back into the ecosystem. About 75 percent of Mercado Pago card spending happens outside the Mercado Livre marketplace.

Still not a bank, and not trying to be

This is the part worth knowing before you move money. Mercado Pago does not hold a full banking licence in Brazil and, as of February, was not applying for one. Chaves said then that evaluating the licence “is not a priority in Brazil, at least not now” and that there was no date.

It operates instead through three vehicles: a payment institution, a finance company called Mercado Crédito, and a securities broker — the same regulatory stack Nubank uses. It injected 2 billion reais (about US$394 million) into Mercado Crédito with central bank approval, taking that unit’s capital to 4.32 billion reais (about US$852 million). It is pursuing full bank licences elsewhere: Argentina since May 2025 and Mexico since 2024.

What it means if you bank in Brazil

This is the other side of a story we have covered twice this year: Brazil’s big banks are shutting branches, and 48 percent of the country’s municipalities now have no in-person bank at all. Febraban puts 83 percent of all banking transactions on digital channels.

For a foreign resident, the practical draw is the remunerated account, which pays up to 105 percent of the CDI daily. With the Selic at 14.00 percent, that is a real cash yield you will not get from a current account at a big bank, and it needs no branch visit and no manager.

The trade-off is the licence. A payment institution is not a bank, and deposit protection and prudential treatment differ from what you get at Itaú or Caixa. That matters more the more money you park there. This is general information, not financial advice.

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