R2, an embedded lending infrastructure provider, has announced its expansion into Brazil, marking its entry into Latin America's largest economy. The move is supported by Ant International, a global digital payment, digitisation, and financial AI solutions provider. Through the expansion, R2 will partner with digital platforms across Brazil to embed working capital solutions directly into the products used by merchants and gig workers.
R2's technology allows digital platforms, marketplaces, payment providers, ecommerce companies, and other businesses serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and gig workers to offer financing to their users without building their own credit operations or taking on credit risk. For platform operators, this creates an additional revenue stream and strengthens their proposition to merchants. For businesses and workers, it provides access to working capital assessed on transactional performance rather than on documentation many do not have.
Built for regional scale
R2 enters the Brazilian market with technology and operational systems developed across four other markets, industries, and economic cycles. As of the second quarter of 2026, eligible businesses using R2's platform receive funding in an average of 0.7 hours, and up to 70% of eligible applicants are pre-approved. The company reports a cross-market Net Promoter Score of 89, and origination volume grew by a factor of 2.5 year-on-year as of July 2026. R2's platform analyses more than 10.3 billion transactions monthly, providing visibility into over 7.3 million merchants across the region, data that underpins its transaction-based underwriting model.
Brazil's digital economy, including widespread adoption of the Pix instant payment system, has brought a large share of SMB and gig worker activity onto digital rails, generating the real-time transactional data on which R2's underwriting depends. This allows the company to assess creditworthiness based on transaction volume, payment patterns, and revenue consistency rather than traditional documentation. Despite generating consistent digital revenues, many businesses and independent workers in Brazil continue to face limited access to traditional financing, a gap R2 aims to address by embedding credit access into platforms already in use.
Partnership with Ant International
The Brazil expansion is backed by Ant International, which is investing in R2's growth to support the deployment of embedded credit solutions across the country. Ant International processes an average of over 20 million daily transactions and serves more than 150 million merchants and two billion user accounts globally, offering payment and account services, embedded credit, treasury management, and AI-based financial tools. In Brazil, Ant International already provides embedded financing and credit technology through partnerships with a local ecommerce platform and local fintech companies.
R2 said Brazil represents the start of a broader phase of geographic expansion, with plans to continue partnering with marketplaces, logistics companies, payment providers, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms to embed financing into their ecosystems.
