Brazil has become one of the most dynamic fintech markets on the planet. With over 200 million citizens, a historically underbanked population, and one of the world’s highest smartphone penetration rates, the country has proven to be fertile ground for financial technology innovation. From digital banks and payment platforms to secured lending and investment apps, Brazilian fintechs have attracted billions in global investment, and several have already reached sustainable profitability.
In this article, we rank the top 10 fintech startups in Brazil based on two critical metrics: the size of their active user base and their current profitability performance. Whether you are an investor, entrepreneur, or simply curious about the future of finance in Latin America, this list gives you the definitive picture of who is winning and why.
How We Ranked These Fintechs
Each company was scored on a composite scale of 0 to 100, with equal weight given to user reach (total customers or monthly active users) and financial performance (net income, revenue growth, and return on equity, where available). Data is drawn from publicly reported financials, IPO filings, and analyst coverage as of early 2025.
The Top 10 Fintech Startups in Brazil — Full Rankings
#1 — Nubank
Segment: Digital neobank (B2C)
Users: 110M+ in Brazil (127M globally)
Profitability: US$2.87B net income FY2025, 33% ROE
Nubank is not just the largest fintech in Brazil — it is the largest digital bank in the world by customer count outside Asia. Founded in 2013, the company built its growth on a simple premise: a no-fee credit card and a genuinely useful mobile app, targeting consumers ignored by Brazil’s oligopolistic traditional banks. That bet paid off spectacularly. Full-year 2025 net income reached US$2.87 billion, up 46% year-over-year, with return on equity hitting 33% — higher than incumbent giants like Itaú. With 110 million users in Brazil alone, Nubank is the clear number one, and it is not particularly close.
#2 — Mercado Pago
Segment: Payments / embedded finance (MercadoLibre)
Users: 72M monthly active users (Q3 2025)
Profitability: Part of MELI; ~US$500M net income Q1 2025
Mercado Pago is the financial arm of MercadoLibre, Latin America’s dominant e-commerce platform. It holds a structural advantage no pure-play fintech can easily replicate: a built-in distribution channel of tens of millions of buyers and sellers already transacting on the marketplace. Monthly active fintech users hit 72 million in Q3 2025, with its Brazilian operations generating strong deposit and credit growth. Its NPS reached record highs, signaling deep user satisfaction. The main caveat is that Brazilian-only financials are not broken out separately, making precise country-level profitability harder to assess.
#3 — PicPay
Segment: Digital payments and neobank (B2C)
Users: 66M total accounts
Profitability: US$59M net income (9 months 2025), Revenue +97% YoY
PicPay’s comeback story is one of the most compelling in Brazilian fintech. The company had long been associated with peer-to-peer payments, but a dramatic strategic pivot toward becoming a full-service digital bank — backed by J&F Investimentos — resulted in explosive growth. Revenue surged 97% year-over-year to US$1.37 billion in the first nine months of 2025, and the company swung to profitability with US$59 million in net income. PicPay also fil ed for a Nasdaq IPO under the ticker PICS, raising over $430 million, signaling confidence in its trajectory and offering international investors direct exposure to Brazil’s digital finance boom.
#4 — Banco Inter
Segment: Digital bank — retail and SME (B2C/B2B)
Users: 41M total, 24M active clients
Profitability: R$336M net income Q3 2025, 14.2% ROE
Banco Inter has quietly become one of the most profitable mid-tier neobanks in Brazil. Listed on Nasdaq, it reported R$336 million in net income in Q3 2025, with a return on equity of 14.2% — a figure that would be respectable for any traditional bank. Its super-app strategy, combining banking, investments, insurance, and a marketplace, has driven strong engagement among its 24 million active users. Inter is proving that you can be both large and profitable without compromising on the product experience that originally won customers over from incumbent banks.
#5 — C6 Bank
Segment: Digital bank — retail and corporate (B2C/B2B)
Users: ~30M customers
Profitability: BRL 2.3B net income; FY2024 — first profitable year
C6 Bank, majority-owned by JPMorgan since 2021, had a landmark 2024: its first full year of profitability, posting BRL 2.3 billion (approximately US$383 million) in net income. Customer deposits grew 54% year-over-year, reflecting deep user trust. C6 differentiates itself with a strong corporate banking offering alongside its retail products, giving it a more diversified revenue base than most consumer-focused peers. Its trajectory suggests a company that prioritized unit economics early, and is now reaping the rewards.
#6 — Neon
Segment: Neobank targeting underserved consumers (B2C)
Users: 30M+ customers
Profitability: Loss of BRL 278.9M (H1 2024) — improving 41% YoY
Neon has built an impressive user base among Brazil’s lower-income population, a segment with enormous long-term potential but significant credit risk challenges in the short term. While the company remains loss-making, its losses narrowed by 41% year-over-year in the first half of 2024. Backed by General Atlantic and Monashees, Neon is investing in credit products and financial education tools that could prove highly sticky. Reaching profitability is the key test ahead, and the improving trajectory is encouraging.
#7 — CloudWalk
Segment: Payments infrastructure and SME banking (B2B/B2C)
Users: 3M+ sellers across 5,500+ cities
Profitability: US$562M annualized revenue (2024); Profitable since 2023
CloudWalk may be the most underrated company on this list. A payments processor and neobank focused on small and medium businesses, it became profitable in 2023 and by 2024 was generating US$562 million in annualized revenue — triple its seller base over the same period. What sets CloudWalk apart is its proprietary blockchain infrastructure, InfinitePay, which enables near-instant settlements and low transaction costs. It serves over 3 million merchants in more than 5,500 Brazilian cities, giving it remarkable geographic reach for a company at its stage.
#8 — Creditas
Segment: Secured consumer lending (B2C)
Users: Loan platform — user count not publicly disclosed
Profitability: BRL 482M revenue Q3 2023; Gross profit +219% YoY
Creditas pioneered the concept of asset-backed consumer lending in Brazil, allowing borrowers to use their homes, cars, or payroll as collateral to access credit at significantly lower interest rates than Brazil’s notoriously expensive personal loan market. Revenue reached BRL 482 million in Q3 2023, and gross profit grew 219% year-over-year as the company improved its credit origination and servicing efficiency. Backed by Softbank and Goldman Sachs among others, Creditas is still working toward full profitability but its margin improvements indicate a business model maturing rapidly.
#9 — StoneCo (Stone)
Segment: Payment solutions and SME banking (B2B)
Users: SME-focused; deposits R$9B+ (Q3 2025)
Profitability: Pix volume +64% YoY – scaling toward full profitability
Stone is a publicly listed fintech (Nasdaq: STNE) that focuses primarily on payment processing and financial services for small and medium enterprises. It has navigated a turbulent few years — including a painful credit portfolio writedown in 2021 — but has rebuilt its fundamentals convincingly. SME deposits exceeded R$9 billion by Q3 2025, and Pix transaction volume grew 64% year-over-year. Stone’s emphasis on serving merchants with integrated hardware, software, and banking is a model with strong retention economics, even if consumer-facing user counts are not its headline metric.
#10 — XP Inc.
Segment: Investment platform and digital wealth management (B2C/B2B)
Users: 4.7M+ active investors
Profitability: Publicly listed; strong and recurring fee-based revenue
XP Inc. is the company that democratized investing in Brazil. Listed on Nasdaq since 2019, it has grown from an independent broker-dealer into a full financial ecosystem spanning equities, fixed income, insurance, credit, and banking. With 4.7 million active investors and a deep advisor network, XP benefits from recurring fee revenues that are less volatile than transaction-based models. It is consistently profitable and continues to gain market share from traditional wealth management firms as Brazilian retail investors become increasingly sophisticated.
Key Takeaways: What Brazil’s Fintech Boom Tells Us
Brazil’s top fintechs share several common traits. They started by solving a specific, painful problem like high bank fees, limited credit access, poor investment options and then expanded into adjacent services to increase lifetime value. User acquisition has largely been won; the battle now is for engagement, profitability, and cross-selling.
Profitability is no longer a distant aspiration for Brazil’s leading fintechs. Nubank, C6 Bank, CloudWalk, PicPay, and Banco Inter are all generating meaningful net income. The era of growth-at-all-costs has given way to a focus on return on equity and sustainable unit economics and that is ultimately good news for both consumers and the broader ecosystem.
For investors and market watchers, Brazil remains one of the highest-conviction opportunities in global fintech. The combination of a large underbanked population, a government-backed instant payment infrastructure (Pix), and a generation of digitally native consumers makes this market structurally different and structurally attractive.
