“Can a Brazilian-owned card scheme, born of the country's biggest banks, become an end-to-end payments infrastructure platform (Bandeira-as-a-Service, anti-fraud, tokenization) competitive with global networks?”
Elo Serviços S.A. is a Brazilian domestic card scheme (bandeira) created in 2011 by Banco do Brasil, Bradesco and Caixa Econômica Federal to compete with Visa and Mastercard in Brazil. Its business is being the payment arrangement itself — the rails, brand, rules and processing services — not consumer banking. In recent years it has expanded into 'Bandeira as a Service', anti-fraud tooling, tokenization of ESG/carbon credits, and standing up its own developer platform (dev.elo.com.br) with authorization, checkout orchestration, and identity APIs.
Elo processes payments through Elo (self-operated card scheme).
Elo's cards run on Elo.
Elo uses Prove for KYC and identity verification.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 3 layers in Elo's stack: Payments / PSP (Elo (self-operated card scheme)); Card network (Elo); KYC (Prove).
Elo is founded in 2011 and headquartered in Barueri, São Paulo, Brazil.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Elo and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.