Shopee receives approval from BC to function as a payment institution

SHPP Brasil, from the Asian online retail giant Shopee, received approval from the Central Bank to operate as a payment institution, in the form of e-money issuer. The authorization was published in the Official Gazette of the Union on Monday (2).

Shopee became the country’s most-downloaded shopping app last year, with more than 100 million downloads, according to data from software development and market analysis firm EmizenTech.

Alongside other websites of Asian origin, such as Shein and Aliexpress, the company has entered the scrutiny of the Federal Revenue Service, which is studying an MP (Provisional Measure) to prevent foreign e-commerce companies from selling goods to Brazilians without paying due taxes.

Shopee says it is no longer a foreign site, as it proposes to build a “local ecosystem”, linking Brazilian entrepreneurs to Brazilian consumers.

in conversation with the Sheet Last month, the company’s director of marketing and strategy, Felipe Piringer, said that Shopee is just a marketplace, that is, a digital platform that sells third-party products, without importing anything directly.

In April, the company reached 2 million local virtual retailers, who expose their products on the marketplace, through a commission on sales. As the report by the Sheetthey account for 87% of the company’s sales.

“Shhoee has CNPJ since 2019. Our headquarters are in the city of São Paulo, where we pay taxes, we didn’t go looking for a cheaper city in the surroundings (laughs)”, said Piringer.

Shopee’s headquarters in Brazil occupies three floors of a building on Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Lima, in São Paulo. The company’s initial capital, which currently employs 1,500 people directly, is R$4 million. The controller is the founder of Singaporean e-commerce giant Forrest Xiaodong Li.

Shopee launched in 2015 in seven Southeast Asian countries at the same time. Based in Singapore, its international expansion began in Brazil in 2019. Today it is also in Europe and other Latin American countries –Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Mexico.

The company’s controller is the Sea group, which in 2021 earned US$ 9.95 billion (about R$ 50 billion). In addition to e-commerce, it operates in the financial market, with the fintech SeaMoney.

X-RAY: Shopee Brazil

Foundation: 2015, in Singapore

Employees: 1,500

registered sellers: more than 2 million

Revenue*: $70 million

Number of orders*: 140 million

Mainly competitors: Mercado Livre, Americanas, Aliexpress

* Data referring to the 4th quarter of 2021