by Ekrem Duman | Aug 19, 2026 | Brazil Company Stories, Mining & Steel
⚡ TL;DRGerdau began in 1901 as a nail factory in Porto Alegre and grew, under five generations of the Gerdau Johannpeter family, into the Americas’ largest long-steel producer — a scrap-recycling mini-mill empire spanning Brazil, the United States,...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 19, 2026 | Brazil Company Stories, Mining & Steel
⚡ TL;DRVale is the world’s largest iron ore and nickel producer — born in 1942 as state company CVRD, privatized in 1997, and transformed by China’s construction boom into one of the most valuable mining groups on earth. Its story carries both...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 19, 2026 | Brazil Company Stories, Fintech & Digital Payments
⚡ TL;DRPix is the Brazilian central bank’s instant-payment system, launched in November 2020 — free for individuals, settling in seconds, 24/7. Within four years it overtook cards and cash to become how Brazil pays, with well over 150 million users...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 19, 2026 | Brazil Company Stories, Fintech & Digital Payments
⚡ TL;DREBANX, founded in Curitiba in 2012, solved a problem Silicon Valley could not: how global companies get paid in Latin America, where consumers use boletos, Pix, local cards and installments that international processors never supported. By connecting...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 19, 2026 | Brazil Company Stories, Fintech & Digital Payments
⚡ TL;DRStone (StoneCo) attacked Brazilian payments from the service angle: green-uniformed agents who show up at a merchant’s door the same day, local hubs in hundreds of cities, and an obsession with SME owners the big acquirers treated as ticket numbers....
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 19, 2026 | Brazil Company Stories, Fintech & Digital Payments
⚡ TL;DRPagBank (formerly PagSeguro) turned Brazil’s army of street vendors, hairdressers and micro-merchants into card-accepting businesses with a cheap little reader called the Moderninha — then banked them. Spun out of internet portal UOL, listed...
