Monkey’s R$200 Billion Trick: Make Banks Bid Against Each Other

The important object in Monkey’s São Paulo office is not a coin, a card or a vault. It is an invoice - the bland rectangle that proves one company has delivered something and another has promised to pay later. In Brazil, that wait might stretch 30, 60, 90 or 120 days. A large buyer can live with the delay. The smaller supplier still has wages, materials and rent due on Friday.

Monkey turns that mismatch into a market. Once a corporate buyer approves an invoice, the supplier can choose to receive the money early. More than one financial institution gets the chance to fund it. They bid in a reverse auction, which means the lowest discount rate wins. The supplier gets cash, the bank or fund owns a receivable tied to a known buyer, and that buyer pays on the original date. Monkey runs the software, integrations, documentation and choreography in between.

It is an unshowy idea with a large footprint. Founded in 2016 by Gustavo Muller Medeiros, Bruno Oliveira and Felipe Adorno, Monkey says its platforms had processed R$200 billion in receivables by June 2026. The company expected another R$100 billion to move through them during 2026 alone. Its public customer wall now contains more than 100 companies, from Suzano and Gerdau to Ambev, iFood, Stellantis and Rede D’Or, alongside more than 100 integrated funding institutions.

The mechanismA three-sided market for money already earned

Monkey is easy to misunderstand because it operates next to familiar financial businesses without quite being one. It does not describe itself as a bank or factoring company, and it does not make ordinary loans. The capital comes from banks, funds and other qualified financiers connected to its system. A supplier is selling the right to collect money that a customer already owes.

That distinction matters. Traditional small-business credit often asks a lender to judge the supplier’s balance sheet, collateral and history. In a buyer-led supply-chain program, the approved invoice and the credit standing of the larger customer do much of the talking. Monkey says costs on SupplyPlus have been, on average, 70 percent below alternatives those suppliers found elsewhere. The number should be read as a company-reported comparison, not a universal promise, but the direction makes sense: stronger risk and more bidders tend to improve the price.

“The product is not another pool of credit. The product is competition for credit.”The logic behind Monkey’s reverse auction

Each corner of the triangle has a reason to show up. Suppliers gain optional liquidity without waiting for the due date. Corporate buyers can extend payment terms, watch the health of a supplier program and reduce the chance that a cash-starved vendor fails at an inconvenient moment. Financial institutions receive a stream of documented assets and access to companies they might not source efficiently on their own.

The product mapOnce the rails worked, Monkey kept reusing them

SupplyPlus was the original product: a corporate accounts-payable program, known in Brazil as risco sacado, that connects the buyer’s suppliers with competing financiers. It also revealed the company’s real expertise. The auction is only the visible moment. Underneath sit onboarding, identity checks, ERP connections, invoice uploads, legal assignment terms, payment status, accounting reports, audit trails and the stubborn work of persuading thousands of suppliers to try a new financial process.

SalesPlus flips the direction: a company brings its own accounts receivable and asks several institutions to quote. SupplyBank packages the machinery for a financial institution that wants an exclusive, branded program. Spike applies similar logic to merchants waiting for card settlements. The product once called Caco, presented today in the Cash Control family, pushes toward everyday cash-flow management.

This is classic enterprise software expansion, but with a useful constraint: every adjacent product touches a receivable, a funding decision or the treasury workflow surrounding it. Monkey is not wandering into consumer checking accounts or speculative trading. It is deepening a position in the operational plumbing of business credit.

Proof in the paper millSuzano turned a program into a case study

The most concrete demonstration sits in Suzano’s supply chain. The pulp producer and Monkey began working together on a financing program that offered suppliers access to Suzano’s credit quality. Over four years, the program processed more than US$1.7 billion, engaged more than 1,600 suppliers and handled roughly one million transactions. In 2025, it won Best Use of Technology for a Working Capital Project at the Working Capital & Supply Chain Finance Awards.

The interesting number is not merely the volume. It is 1,600. A supply-chain finance program creates little value if only the largest, most sophisticated vendors can complete onboarding. Monkey’s customer teams help companies segment and contact suppliers, integrate systems and keep the program active. Software scales the transaction; service work makes the marketplace liquid.

Other programs show the model travelling across industrial categories. Monkey says Gerdau’s program facilitates roughly R$170 million a month for suppliers. Intercement reached R$1 billion in early payments. Public customer material names Petrobras, M. Dias Branco, St. Marche and a long roster of banks and manufacturers. The common thread is not industry. It is a large accounts-payable file surrounded by smaller companies that would rather turn an approved promise into usable cash.

The competitive edgeNeutrality, density and one very local moat

Monkey competes with international working-capital platforms such as C2FO, Taulia and PrimeRevenue, as well as bank-run programs, factoring firms and Brazilian receivables specialists. Its sharpest differentiator is the multi-funder market. A single-bank program may be simple, but it leaves suppliers with one price and can hit a lender’s concentration limits. Monkey can route the same corporate program toward many institutions while keeping one interface for the buyer and supplier.

The second advantage is local depth. Brazil’s credit system comes with particular tax documents, registries, assignment rules and now the duplicata escritural, a digital form of the commercial credit instrument historically tied to an invoice. The new regime is designed to improve traceability, acceptance and legal certainty. B3 has estimated that Brazil generates about R$10 trillion in duplicatas each year, while only a fraction are negotiated.

Monkey says it has connected simultaneously to B3, CERC and Núclea for the assisted-production phase. If the transition works, invoices that once travelled through fragmented files and bilateral checks become easier to issue, acknowledge, track and finance. For Monkey, this is both compliance and distribution. A cleaner national rail can increase the number of assets its marketplace knows how to move.

“It’s not only the technology, but how business happens in each culture.”Gustavo Muller on international expansion, 2026

What comes nextThe hard part of leaving Brazil is not translation

Monkey raised R$67 million, about US$12 million at the time, in a 2024 Series B led by L4 Venture Builder and German development-finance institution DEG, with Kinea and Quona returning. The money was earmarked for technology and expansion in Mexico and the United States. Muller moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to lead the American effort; the company also lists a Santiago presence.

The United States already has mature supply-chain-finance providers and deep bank markets. Monkey cannot rely there on the same complaint that inspired it in Brazil - too few lenders setting too much of the price. Its transferable assets are instead the orchestration layer, white-label software and experience enrolling the smaller suppliers that big corporate programs often fail to reach. Mexico and Chile offer different invoice rules again. The code travels faster than the credit culture.

There are ordinary risks beneath the elegant triangle. Marketplace volume is not revenue, and Monkey does not publish its fee schedule or financial results. Corporate programs take time to integrate. Financing appetite can shrink when markets seize up. Regulators can redraw workflows. A platform serving three constituencies must keep all three satisfied, because disappointed funders weaken pricing, inactive suppliers weaken volume, and an unhappy anchor buyer can remove an entire network at once.

Still, Monkey occupies a precise place in the market. It is enterprise software, fintech infrastructure and a B2B marketplace at the same time. It does not need to persuade people to want a new financial asset. The asset is already sitting in the accounts-payable department, approved and waiting. Monkey’s job is to make that waiting period visible, tradable and competitive.

That may be why the business is more interesting than its ingredients. An invoice is a promise with bad timing. Monkey built a room where institutions argue over the price of fixing it.

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Operating figures and savings comparisons in this profile are company-reported unless otherwise stated. Currency amounts are presented in their originally reported denomination.