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Issuer Afinz

“Can a 35-year-old Brazilian consumer credit company leverage its universal bank charter to become the embedded financial infrastructure layer for fintechs and underbanked consumers in Brazil?”

Founded2021
HQSorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil
IndustryFintech / SMB banking
The story

Founded as Sorocred nearly 35 years ago as a regional consumer credit and credit card company serving Brazil's mass market and unbanked populations, the company pivoted in 2019 to build a digital open platform and in 2021 obtained a full universal bank charter from the Banco Central do Brasil, rebranding as Afinz. The company now operates as an embedded-finance platform offering its banking license and infrastructure (credit, lending, card issuing, Pix payments, insurance, receivables) to fintechs and startups as a BaaS partner, while also serving consumers directly. Card processing is outsourced to FIS.

Last 12 months
—
Product timeline
1989
Founded as Sorocred, a regional consumer credit company targeting the local retail segment and under/unbanked population in Brazil.· pivot
2019
Began building a new company and business model upon the Sorocred foundation, transitioning toward an open platform combining digital financial and non-financial services.· pivot
2021
Granted universal bank authorization by the Central Bank of Brazil in March 2021 and re-founded as Afinz.· banking
2021
Launched Afinz as an open platform combining credit cards, electronic & instant payments, lending, digital bank accounts, securitization, insurance, e-commerce, and wealth management.· banking
2023
Tapped FIS for card processing services, expanding its card issuing and processing infrastructure.· card
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Issuer Afinz
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
3 layers disclosed in Issuer Afinz’s embedded-finance stack
Banking / BaaS
Afinz (in-house)
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
8 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.