The fintech Asaas, a financial services platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), is entering the credit market by launching its first credit card for entrepreneurs. Until now, the company has only offered account opening services, debit cards, and payments via boleto, link, and Pix.
Founded by brothers Piero and Diego Contezini, Asaas was born in Joinville to serve small and medium-sized companies seeking smarter platforms for financial and managerial control. To this end, the fintech started offering digital accounts and more traditional payment methods, such as bank slips for companies, in an intermediation service with large banks.
After some time, the company started to look into the universe of receivables, helping companies that needed more intelligent methods to manage their receivables. "In this journey, our focus became also to show entrepreneurs that a transparent payments and receivables platform could help them maintain good relationships with suppliers," says Piero Contezini, CEO of Asaas.
The new service was a natural addition to the fintech, which was already targeting the complete payments cycle - a process that includes payment, receiving, and granting credit. The next step was to help these entrepreneurs better manage their cash, which prompted the acquisition of two companies, including an ERP platform, an acronym for business management. "We saw that the biggest difficulty for small business was still the issue of credit," he says.
According to Contezini, the Asaas differential in face of other payment platforms for SMEs is the focus on business management. "What we sell is the automation of backoffice processes, and how to monetize that through financial services," he says. "We don't sell the bank account, but the ease and help in reducing the time spent on paperwork."
Asaas currently has more than 1 million open digital accounts, and 150,000 active users - in 2020, that number was 50,000. In August of this year alone, Asaas transacted R$1 billion, almost half of the total turnover for the entire year 2019
Part of these results is due to the addition of Pix to the company's portfolio, assesses Contezini. "We gained new impetus, since we now have agility with immediate settlements and more security in transactions," he says. On another front, the company gained more robustness after a R$37 million investment from Bradesco's Inova Ventures fund in 2020.
Asaas' credit card
With an eye on the credit market, Asaas had been seeking for a year and a half the license from the Central Bank to become a credit granting institution (SCD). With the authorization, in 2021, the company now launches its first credit card for legal entities - especially small and medium-sized companies that were already recurrent users of the company's other services.
The intention, according to Contezini, is to convert at this first moment all the 30,000 debit cards working in the prepaid model into credit cards. "With this, we will release this to all customers who fit our credit offer models, something that begins even in the risk analysis done by us as well." As of January 2023, the goal is to quadruple this number, having 120,000 active cards.
In addition to the credit card, Asaas is also launching its own boleto, a replacement for the generation service currently done with traditional banks. The expectation is that 100% of the customers will use Asaas' own boleto this year and an initial portion of customers will have the credit card released.
The fintech Asaas, a financial services platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), is entering the credit market by launching its first credit card for entrepreneurs. Until now, the company has only offered account opening services, debit cards, and payments via boleto, link, and Pix.
Founded by brothers Piero and Diego Contezini, Asaas was born in Joinville to serve small and medium-sized companies seeking smarter platforms for financial and managerial control. To this end, the fintech started offering digital accounts and more traditional payment methods, such as bank slips for companies, in an intermediation service with large banks.
After some time, the company started to look into the universe of receivables, helping companies that needed more intelligent methods to manage their receivables. "In this journey, our focus became also to show entrepreneurs that a transparent payments and receivables platform could help them maintain good relationships with suppliers," says Piero Contezini, CEO of Asaas.
The new service was a natural addition to the fintech, which was already targeting the complete payments cycle - a process that includes payment, receiving, and granting credit. The next step was to help these entrepreneurs better manage their cash, which prompted the acquisition of two companies, including an ERP platform, an acronym for business management. "We saw that the biggest difficulty for small business was still the issue of credit," he says.
According to Contezini, the Asaas differential in face of other payment platforms for SMEs is the focus on business management. "What we sell is the automation of backoffice processes, and how to monetize that through financial services," he says. "We don't sell the bank account, but the ease and help in reducing the time spent on paperwork."
Asaas currently has more than 1 million open digital accounts, and 150,000 active users - in 2020, that number was 50,000. In August of this year alone, Asaas transacted R$1 billion, almost half of the total turnover for the entire year 2019
Part of these results is due to the addition of Pix to the company's portfolio, assesses Contezini. "We gained new impetus, since we now have agility with immediate settlements and more security in transactions," he says. On another front, the company gained more robustness after a R$37 million investment from Bradesco's Inova Ventures fund in 2020.
Asaas' credit card
With an eye on the credit market, Asaas had been seeking for a year and a half the license from the Central Bank to become a credit granting institution (SCD). With the authorization, in 2021, the company now launches its first credit card for legal entities - especially small and medium-sized companies that were already recurrent users of the company's other services.
The intention, according to Contezini, is to convert at this first moment all the 30,000 debit cards working in the prepaid model into credit cards. "With this, we will release this to all customers who fit our credit offer models, something that begins even in the risk analysis done by us as well." As of January 2023, the goal is to quadruple this number, having 120,000 active cards.
In addition to the credit card, Asaas is also launching its own boleto, a replacement for the generation service currently done with traditional banks. The expectation is that 100% of the customers will use Asaas' own boleto this year and an initial portion of customers will have the credit card released.