iFood to launch prepaid debit card and digital account for restaurants

Contxto – The lines between industries are getting blurrier in Brazil. 

Magazine Luiza, a major retailer and e-commerce platform recently bought AiQFome, a food delivery startup. Meanwhile, iFood—a food delivery startup owned by Movile—is now playing the role of fintech with the launch of a prepaid card and account for its restaurant partners.

As competition across all these segments gets tougher, the bigger players want in in the hopes of becoming more all-encompassing problem-solvers for their respective users.

Evidently it’s the type of maneuver that only large, well-funded companies can afford.

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What is Magazine Luiza up to?

Magazine Luiza—or “Magalu” for short—has been going on some serious shopping sprees as of late. 

Last month, it bought one media company, a media platform, as well as a payment company, Stoq. These acquisitions make sense as strategies to bolster its business with small and medium-sized retailers.

Although buying AiQFome might stand out as odd.

Why would a retailer care about managing pizza deliveries? Two words, one hyphen: super-app.

“This is another strategic move by Magalu to develop its business ecosystem and strengthen its superapp,” explains Roberto Bellissimo, the company’s CFO.

Rightly so, through AiQFome’s extensive presence in Brazil, Magalu will connect with over 2 million registered customers and 17,000 restaurants.

Very much like its competitor Amazon, Magalu wants to build an extensive network with its vendors so as to satisfy all their needs be it in software, payment solutions, marketplace visibility, logistics, and yes, pizza deliveries. 

Speaking of pizza…

iFood wants to deliver a user debit card

Movile is a majority shareholder at iFood and MovilePay as well as an investor of Zoop, a banking-as-a-service startup.

Correspondingly, Movile has fostered ties between these companies to the point that Zoop had already become iFood’s main partner in payment solutions.

But now with MovilePay they’re launching iFood Facilita, a prepaid card and digital account for iFood’s partnering restaurants. 

Through it, restaurant owners can withdraw funds and complete payments at no charge. Moreover, they benefit from having all these transactions compiled onto one place as opposed to having their finances spread across multiple accounts.

Likewise, thanks to MovilePay, restaurants can access additional financial services such as payments via QR Codes, run credit operations, issuance of payment slips, to name a few.

For parent company and VC Movile, there is a big future in fintech solutions.

“We see enormous potential in the vertical of fintechs and we believe that this will be the major trend for the coming years. For this reason, our focus is on expanding the Movile Group’s fintechs,” says Patrick Hruby, CEO at Movile.

Related articles: Tech and startups from Brazil!

-ML