Nubank: Competing for the Deposit, Not the TerminalNarrow moat
StoneCo (STNE) — moat facet
The two companies are usually said to compete on payments and largely do not — what is contested is whose account the settlement sits in overnight.
The most valuable thing StoneCo has built in the last five years is not its acquiring share. It is R$11.1 billion of retail deposits from 3.6 million banking active clients, up from R$6.1 billion two years earlier1 — funding for the credit book, and the relationship that makes a merchant hard to dislodge.
That is the asset Nubank competes for, and it competes for it from a position no acquirer occupies. Nubank reached scale by giving away consumer banking, holds a customer base measured in tens of millions of Brazilians, and has been extending into business accounts for exactly the small merchants StoneCo serves. It does not need to sell a terminal to take the deposit. It needs the merchant to keep their money somewhere convenient.
The distinction matters because the two companies are usually discussed as though they compete on payments, and they largely do not. What is contested is whose account the settlement sits in overnight, whose app the owner opens in the morning, and therefore who gets asked for the loan.
StoneCo's advantage is that the money arrives in its account by default, since it is the party doing the settling, and that a merchant's business banking is stickier than a consumer's. Its disadvantage is that a company with tens of millions of consumer relationships and a lower cost of funds is a formidable thing to defend a deposit base against.
Watch deposits per banking client. Growing client numbers while the balance per client falls would mean StoneCo is winning accounts and losing the money in them.
StoneCo's deposit base grew from R$6.1 billion to R$11.1 billion in two years while Nubank extended into business accounts, so both sides are advancing on the same ground. The settlement arriving in StoneCo's own account by default is a durable structural advantage; a rival with tens of millions of consumer relationships and a lower cost of funds is a durable structural problem.
The two companies are usually said to compete on payments and largely do not. What is contested is whose account the settlement sits in overnight, and therefore who gets asked for the loan. Watch deposits per banking client — growing account numbers while the balance per account falls means StoneCo is winning accounts and losing the money in them.
Source: StoneCo FY2025 Form 20-F ↗- ReportedRetail deposits reached R$11,091.0 million at end-2025, from R$6,119.5 million two years earlier, across more than 3.6 million banking active clients.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 ↗