dLocal is building a monopoly in plain sight, and the market hasn’t fully priced the risk 👀📈; Ramp just shipped a CLI for AI Agents, and it’s smarter than it sounds 🤖💳

FinTech is Eating the World, 8 April

Hey Everyone,

Good morning & happy Wednesday! Today we’re diving deep into dLocal, which is building a payments monopoly in plain sight (deep dive into dLocal’s Q4 2025 & full 2025 year financials, unpacking the most important facts & figures to see whether DLO 0.00%↑ is worth your time and money in the years to come + bonus deep dives into the latest financials of other LatAm gems MercadoLibre & Nubank inside), and Ramp that shipped a CLI for AI Agents, and it’s much smarter than it sounds (what Ramp CLI is really about, what’s the bigger play here that even Visa wants to participate in + bonus deep dive into the brilliant rivalry of Brex vs. Ramp & how Ramp gave AI agents their cards, and how to turn Claude into your Sr. Financial Analyst inside). So let’s jump straight into the amazing stuff 🌶️

dLocal is building a monopoly in plain sight, and the market hasn’t fully priced the risk 👀📈

Earnings time 🤑 FinTech giant dLocal DLO 0.00%↑ processed $40.8 billion in payments last year across 44 emerging markets. Revenue crossed $1 billion for the first time. Net income grew 63%. Let that sink in.

And yet the most important number in the company’s earnings release wasn’t any of those. It was 0.88% - the gross profit dLocal extracted per dollar of payment volume in Q4, down from 1.09% a year earlier. A 19% compression in take rate, in four quarters, at a company whose entire investment thesis rests on being the toll booth that global commerce must pass through to reach the Global South.

The tension between those two stories - extraordinary growth & quietly eroding unit economics - is what makes dLocal one of the most interesting names in fintech right now.

Let’s dive deeper into this, unpack the most important financial facts & figures, understand what they mean, and see whether dLocal is worth your time and money in the years to come.