September 17, 2025
In Brazil, choosing a reliable Banking as a Service (BaaS) provider is essential for companies that want to offer financial services without becoming a full-fledged bank. This guide presents technical, regulatory, and security criteria that help your company evaluate vendors, highlighting practical examples from Azify to facilitate understanding and support safe and scalable decisions.
What is Banking as a Service (BaaS) and how does it work?
Banking as a Service (BaaS) is a model that allows companies to integrate financial services directly into their platforms without needing to become a full-fledged bank. In practice, it's like having a bank's infrastructure ready and accessible via APIs to offer digital accounts, cards, payments, and other services.
For financial companies, BaaS accelerates product launches and reduces operational costs. For non-financial businesses, such as e-commerce or fintechs, it allows monetization of the customer base with customized financial solutions.
A Azify, for example, offers a BaaS ecosystem that connects companies to regulated services, ensuring integration flexibility and regulatory compliance, without exposing the company to direct banking operation risks.
Informational content. Does not constitute an offer of securities, foreign exchange, or payment services. Past profitability does not guarantee future results. Azify operates directly or through duly authorized partners, as per the scope. Evaluate risks, accounting and tax impacts with your advisors.
What is the size of the BaaS market in Brazil and why does it matter when choosing providers?
Before defining criteria for selecting a partner for Banking as a Service (BaaS), it is important to observe the scenario in which this market operates in Brazil. In 2022, the sector moved US$ 538 million and, according to projections from Grand View Research, it is expected to exceed US$ 2 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.3% between 2023 and 2030. This performance places the country as a leader in growth in Latin America, accounting for 2.4% of the global sector revenue in 2022 and with the prospect of regional prominence by the end of the decade.
The most relevant data is that the category of platforms is currently the largest and most profitable segment, and also the one that is growing the fastest. This means that the most prominent providers in Brazil tend to offer robust technological infrastructures, focusing on scalable APIs and modular services.
Source: Grand View Research
For companies seeking a BaaS partner, this context reinforces two main points:
The competition will be increasingly fierce – with more players offering solutions, differentiating oneself requires evaluating solid technical and regulatory criteria.
The moment of choice is strategic – entering the market now, with a reliable provider, can ensure a competitive advantage as demand expands rapidly.
In other words: the accelerated growth of the Brazilian BaaS market increases opportunities, but also demands heightened attention in partner analysis. Evaluating technological solidity, regulatory adherence, and the ability to scale alongside the market is the way to mitigate risks and take advantage of this expansion movement.
What technical criteria are essential for choosing a BaaS provider?
Choosing a BaaS provider involves evaluating the technical robustness of the platform. Some key points include:
1. APIs and integration with existing systems
APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow your platform to connect to the BaaS service automatically. Azify provides documented, standardized APIs that are compatible with various systems, enabling:
Real-time operations
Automated reporting
Simple integration with ERPs and CRMs
2. Technological flexibility
The technology needs to adapt to the company’s growth demands. Rigid platforms can limit innovation. Azify uses a modular architecture, ensuring that new functionalities can be integrated without complex reconfiguration.
3. Monitoring and SLAs
Observability systems and service level agreements (SLAs) ensure stability and quick response to incidents. Azify maintains 24/7 monitoring and clear SLAs for uptime and technical support.
How do compliance and regulation impact the choice of BaaS?
In Brazil, operating financial services requires attention to the regulations of the Central Bank, Securities and Exchange Commission, Law 14.478/2022, and anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) rules.
Legal requirements and certifications
Companies must ensure that their BaaS provider is regularized and authorized to operate according to the regulations. Azify maintains:
Certification of partners regulated by the Central Bank
Periodic compliance audits
KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML/CTF policies
Governance and audit
Transparency and traceability are essential. Azify provides audit dashboards and reports that allow companies to monitor compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.
What security and data protection measures are essential?
Security is central to any BaaS operation. Some criteria include:
Data encryption: Protection of sensitive information in transit and storage.
Continuous monitoring: Fraud detection systems and real-time alerts.
Access policies: Strict control of permissions and multifactor authentication.
Azify implements all these practices, ensuring that client data and transactions remain secure, in accordance with LGPD and international data protection standards.
How to evaluate the scalability and performance of a BaaS provider?
For companies planning rapid growth, it is essential to choose a BaaS platform that can keep up with demand without compromising performance and user experience. Evaluating scalability goes beyond numbers: it involves analyzing how the system responds to traffic spikes, expansion of clients, and consistent increases in transaction volume.
A first point to consider is the platform's growth capacity. It is important to check whether the provider can support a significant increase in users and concurrent transactions without loss of speed or interruptions. Platforms with modular architecture and elastic infrastructure are better prepared to absorb this demand, ensuring that the growth of your business is not limited by technical constraints.
Another critical aspect is the platform's stability. Serious providers conduct regular stress tests and maintain constant monitoring to prevent downtime or unexpected failures. The ability to identify and fix problems before they impact operations is an important differentiator for companies that rely on real-time financial services.
The specialized technical support is also part of the evaluation. Having access to trained teams, capable of quickly resolving issues and implementing updates without affecting operations, ensures that your company remains agile and reliable to customers and partners.
Azify, for example, offers scalable and robust solutions that support national-level expansion, combining high availability, continuous monitoring, and dedicated technical support, keeping user experience consistent and secure even in the face of increasing transaction volumes.
What is the market outlook for BaaS in Brazil and how does this influence the evaluation of providers?
As mentioned earlier, the Banking as a Service (BaaS) market in Brazil is on the rise. In 2022, the sector moved US$ 538 million, and the projection is to reach US$ 2.05 billion by 2030. These numbers position Brazil as the leader in growth in Latin America, with a strategic role in the regional consolidation of this model.
A relevant piece of data from the report is that platforms accounted for 57.55% of revenue in 2022, establishing themselves as the largest and most profitable segment of BaaS in the country. This reinforces the importance of assessing, in providers, the robustness of the technological platform and the ability to offer scalable APIs, observability, and modular services.
Another point is that, in addition to accelerated growth, there is a movement of increasing competitiveness: global and local players are expanding their presence in Brazil, which increases partnership options but also requires a more rigorous analysis process.
In light of this, companies intending to adopt BaaS should observe three key factors when evaluating providers in Brazil:
Technological maturity of the platform → considering this is the segment leading growth, choosing providers with secure APIs, clear documentation, and the ability for rapid integration is essential.
Regulatory adherence and compliance → in a market regulated by the Central Bank, CVM, and LGPD, compliance must be embedded from the design stage (“compliance by design”).
Ability to anticipate trends → as the Brazilian market is the most dynamic in Latin America, providers offering multi-currency solutions, international scalability, and integration with new models (such as crypto and tokenization) tend to be more strategic in the long term.
In other words: the growth of the BaaS market in Brazil creates enormous opportunities, but it will only be sustainable for companies that choose aligned partners in platform, regulation, and future vision.
