- dlocal is a 360 payments technology platform for emerging markets.
- dlocal works with more than 450 global merchants to maximise revenue, eliminate cross-border payment complexities and minimise operational costs.
- The local payments expert offers more than 300 locally-relevant payment methods. These enable users in emerging markets to buy any goods or services without having a credit card or bank account.
Agustín Botta, Account Manager at dLocal, tells us more about the company.
How was dLocal founded?
dLocal is an Uruguayan company, founded to help international companies to sell in emerging markets. The emerging markets definition has been widening. Initially, we started in Brazil with a single UK Merchant which needed assistance providing payments solutions to users buying international products but do not possess an international credit card.
We came up with a cash-based method that would make possible to these users to pay in cash, and we would collect those funds and settle with the merchant. Soon after, this merchant came to us requesting additional payment methods like bank transfer and credit cards, which we implemented. We expanded from the first customer and started providing solutions for other clients.
One of these merchants was Uber who told us they needed help across other markets in Latin America, so we expanded. Today, dlocal has attracted some big merchants, like Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Nike, Booking, Dropbox, Victoria Secret and many other huge players from many industries mainly based in Europe and the USA.
What do you offer merchants?
We give every merchant that approaches us the possibility to reach all the emerging markets in our network to monetize on the products or services they offer through e-commerce. We have more than 350 payment methods available to provide to their customers worldwide. There is no need for companies to have a legal entity in any emerging country. We collect in local currency and settle all the revenue internationally in hard currency to the Merchant headquarters. dLocal takes care of all the local legislation, including taxes and compliance issues.
Presently we cover all Latin America, Mexico and recently expanded into Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic in Central America. In APAC, we have Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and in EMEA, we cover Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Turkey for now. We’re also going for Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Panama. We will be covering at least five new countries every year.
Our two main products are ‘Payins’ and ‘Payouts’ solutions. The Payin method allows merchants to provide any payment method from any country through us. Through dLocal, a user can pay with a credit card, bank transfer, cash ticket and e-wallets. This enables users in emerging markets to buy any good or service from our merchants, even without having a credit card or bank account. Payouts are the other way round of the flow. The Merchant funds dLocal, and we perform massive payments into each country for different individuals. For example, when paying each Uber driver or Air BnB host commission in their local currency.
By using dLocal’s single API platform, merchants remove the need for separate Pay In and Pay Out processors, setting up local entities, integrating isolated acquirers and payment methods. Merchants not only have the advantage of offering a whole world of different payment methods to their users but also they will have much better conversion rates with local acquiring. We could guarantee up to 15 % improvement in average across the different emerging markets in comparison to international acquirers.
What makes dLocal unique?
We are a fast-growing company, and most importantly, a client-driven one. We are unique in offering an end-to-end solution to our Merchants. By connecting to dLocal, a company reaches a significant number of countries instantly. We work with top companies not only because of our scalable and optimized solutions but also because we have developed specific features for many of them.
Some of the key benefits are: Fallback with more than one acquirer (redundancy), higher conversion rates than international acquiring, we support 3ds , dynamic routing per card BIN (first 6 digits of a credit card), customised and detailed reports, instalments for credit cards and an updated fraud engine based on artificial intelligence blocking any fraudulent user.
We rely on a whole new Merchant panel design where you could track every transaction with all the relevant information, regarding conversion rates, volumes, refunds, chargebacks, trends and more, making possible optimisations from a strategy perspective. We utilise a whole new Merchant panel design where you can track every transaction with all the relevant information, regarding conversion rates, volumes, refunds, chargebacks, trends and more, making possible optimisations from a strategy perspective.
What’s next for dLocal?
We are continually looking for new solutions to delight our Merchants or seek new technologies that will make a better experience for future users.
We are working on a new product, Pay Later. The good thing about credit cards is that you give credit to the person, and the payment is immediate. We want to implement something similar using Cash methods. Users will be able to get the purchase approved and pay later. It works like a microloan given to the user at the moment the payment is made, and that payment goes through cash providers with a corresponding interest rate, repaid in cash whenever they want.
We are also moving towards the digitization of payments. We have seen that in many countries, the mix between cards and payment alternatives is changing, and is going to more digital methods, which are starting to beat cards. This is happening in India with UPI, in Brazil with Pix, and in Argentina with different wallets. Africa is also moving towards this with what they call “mobile money”. These new focuses allow us to reach even more people who are not in the baking atmosphere presently. We are developing specific solutions for Brazil, India, Mexica and Argentina.
What are dLocal’s company values?
We built a company based on our culture and the people around it. We have a culture of not backing down and breaking our own expectations. That is possible because of the strong bond we have among our team.
Without the team we have, where the people work hard because they feel all the companies achievements as their own, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We are grateful of all that we’ve experienced so far, but we have just gotten started!
