Casas Bahia Pay
“Can Casas Bahia turn its 110M-customer retail base into Brazil's dominant embedded-credit platform for the C/D demographic?”
Launched in 2019 as banQi, the digital-banking arm of Via (Casas Bahia's parent). Regulated as a payment institution and SCD by the Banco Central in 2021, positioning it to originate credit directly. In 2026 it rebranded to Casas Bahia Pay, folding the digital bank into the ~74-year-old retail brand to leverage 110M customers and 1,000+ physical stores. Strategically pivoting from a stand-alone neobank to the financial-services layer of the Casas Bahia commerce ecosystem — with lending (crediário digital) and embedded insurance as the near-term monetization vectors, and plans to expose the credit engine to third-party marketplaces (e.g. Amazon).