PicPay launches digital account for companies and plans to move R $ 31 billion

São Paulo – PicPay will start opening payment accounts for small businesses in the first quarter and multiply the supply of financial products in 2020, amid efforts to establish itself as a major financial marketplace in Brazil. "By the end of 2020, we will have everything a big bank has in terms of product," PicPay President Gueitiro Genso told Reuters. With about 14 million users, PicPay presents itself as the largest payment application in the country, with 3.9 million of them active customers. The company's goal controlled by J&F's Original Bank, which also owns JBS, is to reach 20 million accounts by December. This expansion is predicted despite a growing universe of retailers, large and small banks, fintechs and e-commerce companies that have taken off aggressive campaigns to open digital accounts in the country. With much of this movement based on subsidies and rewards, analysts predict that consolidation could begin to happen as early as 2020. Genso argues that in picpay's case the subsidy policy is punctual. According to the executive, who took charge PicPay in 2019, after more than three decades at Banco do Brasil, the decisive factor in determining winners in the payment swipe market will be the success of making the public focus their financial transactions on its platform, giving greater scale and profitability to the business. "It has to have recurrence, otherwise the business does not prosper," Genso said. With this reasoning, the posting of accounts for entrepreneurs is part of PicPay's extensive launch schedule for 2020, which includes investment products, personal credit, insurance, people loans, credit card and financial advice, among others. The expansion of the provision of services for small entrepreneurs is part of the same strategy of trying to focus on the platform the operations of both individuals and small businesses, including their payments to their suppliers and services as anticipation of receivables. Present in 1.5 million stores, including locations that own Cielo machines, PicPay expects to reach a transaction volume of more than R$ 31 billion by 2020, an amount about six times higher than last year. And unlike groups such as Mercado Pago, Mercado Livre, Nubank and Banco Inter, which have worked with their own financial products, at PicPay the entire shelf is composed of third-party offers. In recent months, the company has partnered with Cielo and Linx. For Genso, this strategy helps the company focus on its primary goal of being a major transaction hub, while avoiding consuming capital, which it would have to do if it offered products such as credit and insurance. "We will focus on what we know how to do well," said the president of PicPay, a platform created in Vitória (ES) and which has the Original Bank as a controller since 2015. "We get into having a credit engine doesn't align with this guideline." PicPay is expected to rise from the current 1,200 to 1,800 the employee sheet by December, including hiring about 100 data scientists to expand the company's transaction hub structure. According to the executive, this should help the company stay profitable and multiply net revenue by up to four times this year, to about 1.3 billion reais. In 2019, PicPay's net revenue reached R$ 338 million, up 415% over the previous year.