Receivables, Duplicatas, and the Quiet Revolution in Brazil's Credit Markets

In this episode of Brazil (is not) for Beginners, Isaac Matzner sits down with Andre Buchaim, Head of Sales at Mercado de Recebíveis — a fintech focused on credit solutions for small and medium businesses — for a deep dive into one of the least understood but most consequential corners of the Brazilian economy: its credit and receivables market. Brazil’s payment system is more complex than Pix alone. Behind every coffee shop transaction, every B2B invoice, and every supply chain payment lies a web of settlement timelines, anticipation fees, and credit risks that shape how businesses survive — or don’t. Andre, who has spent his career at the intersection of traditional banking (Itaú BBA, Santander, XP), fintech and credit structuring, walks us through the whole ecosystem from scratch: how receivables are created, why the misalignment between payment cycles drives up the cost of capital, and what the move to electronic duplicatas is finally changing. His Sr. Miyagi example — a lettuce farmer waiting 90 days to be paid by Pão de Açúcar while still owing his own suppliers in 12 — makes the stakes concrete. The conversation also covers the Central Bank’s decade-long agenda: first opening the market to competition, then regulating innovation, and now raising the bar on security. Andre’s take is clear — for all the noise around Nubank and Revolut, the Brazilian Central Bank may be the most underrated fintech of the last 20 years. And the duplicatas reform, still in its early stages, may be the most important thing happening in Brazilian capital markets right now. Other key topics include: • How the traditional payment methods (credit card and boleto) create misaligned cash flow cycles for Brazilian businesses • What a receivable is, when it’s created, and why anticipation became a whole industry • The difference between nota fiscal, boleto, and duplicata — and why linking them matters • How duplicata fraud worked before electronic registration (triplicatas, cartórios, competing claims) • FIDCs explained — what they are, who runs them, and how they buy receivables from the market • How the risk of a small farmer’s invoice can be repriced based on Petrobras or Vale’s creditworthiness • Split payments and the tax reform connection — and what it means for working capital • And much more…