DLocal Limited

dLocal connects global merchants to local payment methods across Latin America, Africa and Asia, running two flows with different economics. Pay-ins carry localization, fraud and compliance work and earn a real rate. Payouts move money with far less service attached and earn much less. Any read of the business starts with the mix between them, because volume growth and revenue growth have never been the same number.

The structural feature is that take rate falls as the business succeeds. Larger merchants price down, payouts grow faster than pay-ins, and revenue reported in USD shrinks whenever an emerging market currency does. Gross profit over TPV was 2.51% in Mar-21, 1.1% when I wrote on the name, and 0.72% in 2Q26. None of that is deterioration in the ordinary sense. It is what the business looks like when it wins the largest merchants and moves more money for them.

That leaves one question worth tracking: whether merchant expansion outruns the compression. The 4Q24 update argued it would not, because new merchant revenue had fallen to $6.1M and net revenue retention had decayed to 106%. That call was wrong. NRR reached 153% in 2Q26 and has held above 140% for five straight quarters, with TPV retention at 188%, so existing merchants adding countries, methods and products carried the business without help from new logos. TPV grew 92% year over year in 2Q26 and gross profit 29%.

Two short attacks have hit the name, Muddy Waters in November 2022 and Hollenden Square in February 2025. Neither produced regulatory action or a restatement. The 2022 round did produce governance change worth having, including Pedro Arnt arriving from MercadoLibre.

Not refreshed since the March 2025 work. The figures above are marked to 2Q26, but the underlying analysis is eighteen months old and was wrong on its central question. Monitoring rather than active. Anything actionable here needs the merchant cohort and take rate work done again from the current disclosure.