A few weeks after the Brazilian Central Bank’s confirmation of the impending application of a new regulation limiting credit card interest rates left the South American country’s fintechs uncertain, the unicorn PicPay announced its entry into the corporate benefits sector to diversify its product portfolio.
The Brazilian fintech will offer services ranging from payroll lending and payroll management to corporate card management.
Users can now access the new service, PicPic, from the fintech’s digital account. According to the company, some of the advantages of these new services are, for example, that there is no need to pay fees for salary advances and that it is possible to transfer benefit balances between different categories and send these funds to shared external accounts.
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In a statement, PicPay’s Vice President of Financial Services, Danilo Caffaro, said that “We want to be a solution that delivers to the worker much more than just a card to receive benefits, but a whole new experience that helps to give them a breather when the bills get tight to avoid expensive credit lines, and that gives them the power of choice and freedom to manage everything they receive from the company.
Caffaro also stated, “in addition to fulfilling the role of actually being a benefit for the employee, [PicPay’s new corporate service] helps HR retain and engage its talent even more.”
Diversifying the portfolio
PicPay stated that, before reaching the market, the solution went through tests for eight months with 10,000 company and partner employees.
The company aims to serve up to 400,000 beneficiaries of the new service by 2023.
The Brazilian fintech has recently sought to diversify its business. In February this year, for example, the company started offering payroll lending services for primary pensioners and public servants after acquiring fintech BX Blue.
“With the new changes and the increased competitiveness in the industry, we are facing a race for innovation and better products and experiences. In this race, the winner is the worker, who becomes the center of the discussion, and HR, which is attentive to new demands and needs,” said Tiago Vasconcelos, the executive who will lead PicPay’s new business unit in the joint statement.
Positive results in last quarter
Despite the stricter times for fintechs in LatAm, fintech results have improved considerably.
In Q4 2022, PicPay reversed the negative result of $98 million suffered last year by reporting a net profit of $3.8 million.
This allowed the company to bring forward its break even by two years, planned for 2024. And it tripled its annual revenues, closing 2022 with $144 million.
