The brand new wager of Armindo Mota, founding father of Wappa and Stuo: a digital financial institution

Stuo is investing BRL 10 million to create a financial institution aimed at taxi drivers and private car drivers

10 months ago, Armindo Mota, founder of Wappa, announced the merger of the mobility app with fintech Expense Mobi and the creation of Stuo. The objective was to create a corporate superapp that concentrated travel, hotel, food and so on on a single platform. Still in the oven, the superapp comes up with the proposal to look at all the pains of companies in the management of the employee detachment routine.

O Stuo.BNKthe digital bank that the company is announcing now, looks at another side of the business: the more than 120 thousand taxi drivers and drivers of private cars that transport professionals from more than 10 thousand companies in more than 2 thousand cities in the country. Among the companies, Santander, McDonald’s, Natura, Dafiti, Amil and Samsung🇧🇷

How the bank works

With investments of BRL 10 millionStuo.BNK starts to concentrate the payments for rides for these professionals, today diluted by several banks, in its ecosystem and wants to approach an audience that is already with the company.

“The great challenge of digital banks is to acquire the user and then make him use it. At the end of the day, we already have this base of taxi drivers and every day we are paying, settling, putting money into these accounts,” he says. The executive is one of the pioneers of the corporate mobility market with the creation of Wappa in 2001, well before the arrival of running apps.

Among the benefits, Stuo intends to speed up payments, provide personal credit and also transform the bank into a supperapp, adding solutions from partners such as insurance companies, health plans and supply chains that offer services tailored to the reality of drivers.

According to the executive, professionals, although not unbanked, find it difficult to access better credit conditions and benefits at financial institutions due to issues such as proof of income. The new bank, having the data “at home” and a certain predictability of earnings, is able to better understand the data and facilitate processes and releases.

To create the new institution, Stuo partnered with Arbi bank, which offers a “bank as a service” solution. “At first, even to feel the receptiveness and gain scale, it is a model that we believe is more appropriate. We want to gain traction and later on we can see our solution”, he says. Since it began to be presented to taxi drivers, around 4 months ago, 97% have already started to receive it there, according to internal numbers.

Integrated with the bank, Stuo also launched a debit and credit machinea product that hits the market with up to 50% reduction in current market rates, makes payments on one business day and has no advance fee.

“They will have a much cheaper service than the market because we look at them as a combo. He already pays a fee with mobility rides and has started using the bank. So, we have cheaper and more adherent services for him”, he says about the introduction of the complementary service.

How is Stuo?

With the merger between the two operations of Wappa and Expense Mobi, Stuo should close the year with more than R$ 110 million in revenue – around 90% of the amount comes from mobility operation from Wappa.

For 2023, it projects a growth of 50% over 2022, an estimate that takes into account the expansion of the potential market. The company has been working to build cross-selling strategies for products and generate more value within customers.

For Stuo.BNK, not included in the R$ 110 million, the expectation is that have revenues between BRL 5 million and BRL 10 million in 2023🇧🇷

Source: Exam