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# Bull Raises US$3.9 Million to Let Brazilian Companies Launch Their Own Credit Products Without Building a Bank
- URL: https://www.theinvestorsociety.com/bull-raises-us-3-9-million-to-let-brazilian-companies-launch-their-own-credit-products-without-building-a-bank/
- Published: 2026-09-04T01:00:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T01:00:56.000Z
- Author: The Editor
- Tags: Western Hemisphere

Bull, a Brazilian credit-as-a-service startup, announced on September 1, 2026, a seed round of US$3.9 million (R$20 million) co-led by Maya Capital and Caravela, with participation from Canary, which had led the company's US$2 million (R$10 million) pre-seed in October 2025\. The company was founded in 2025 by Chief Executive Officer Juliana Freitas and Chief Operating Officer José Pires Neto, who previously co-founded the Fortaleza-based consumer credit company FortBrasil, which reached two million customers and originated some US$3.9 billion (R$20 billion) in credit before being acquired by DM in 2023.

Bull sells the infrastructure that lets a company launch and run its own credit product — underwriting models, servicing, customer support, collections and connections to receivables funds known in Brazil as FIDCs — without building the operation in-house. Its first product is private payroll-deducted lending, or crédito consignado privado, for formally employed CLT workers, though the platform was designed from the start for multiple credit modalities. In under a year the company moved from an MVP to more than 20 mid-size and large clients, including RecargaPay, Ng.Cash, C&A and Pernambucanas, with a team of roughly 40\. Management expects to surpass US$20 million (R$100 million) in monthly originations by the third quarter and is targeting US$196 million (R$1 billion) in cumulative operations by the end of 2026, and US$2 billion (R$10 billion) within five years. The new capital will go toward AI infrastructure, credit decision models, data governance, cybersecurity, automation and go-to-market expansion, with collateralized products such as vehicle and motorcycle financing and receivables factoring on the roadmap.

## Market Context

Bull is riding one of the fastest-moving credit expansions in recent Brazilian history. The federal Crédito do Trabalhador program, launched in 2025, opened payroll-deducted lending to private-sector CLT workers through a centralized government system, and private consignado volume reached US$10.7 billion (R$54.5 billion) in 2025, a 183.6% year-over-year increase. Roughly 19 million workers are expected to participate in 2026, with projections of more than US$23.5 billion (R$120 billion) in volume over the program's initial years. Rates run between 2.5% and 3% a month, well below Brazil's revolving credit card rates, and borrowers can pledge up to 10% of their FGTS severance balance as collateral. In April 2026 the labor ministry moved to cap fees and limit the total cost of consignado credit.

That growth has created a distribution problem the incumbents cannot fully serve. Banks have the balance sheets but not the payroll relationships; retailers, payment apps and HR platforms have the employees and the data but no credit operation. Credit-as-a-service players have been competing to fill that gap for several years, and Bull's pitch is that it delivers the full operating stack rather than an API alone. The founders' track record is doing meaningful work in the round: a team that built and sold a two-million-customer credit book is an easier underwrite at seed than a first-time team, which is also why the company has raised US$5.9 million (R$30 million) across two rounds in under twelve months.

## The Number

> "In one year, we moved from an MVP to more than 20 clients, preparing to surpass R$100 million in monthly credit origination in the third quarter." — Juliana Freitas, Co-founder and CEO, Bull

## Regional Relevance

For the United States, Bull is a useful read on where American and global capital sees returns in Latin American fintech now that the growth-at-any-cost era has closed. The model itself is familiar: embedded lending infrastructure has produced substantial US businesses, and the "let any company offer credit" thesis underpins firms from Affirm's merchant stack to banking-as-a-service providers. What differs is the policy tailwind. Brazil's government effectively created a new lending rail and made repayment collection an administrative process rather than a credit-risk exercise, a structural feature US embedded lenders do not have. For US investors and operators, that makes Brazil a live test of how quickly infrastructure providers can capture a category when the state removes the hardest part of the underwriting problem.

For Brazil, the significance is about who ends up owning the customer relationship in the consignado expansion. The Crédito do Trabalhador rollout has been framed in Brasília as a financial-inclusion measure, moving indebted households from revolving card debt at rates above 400% a year onto payroll-deducted loans in the 2.5% to 3% monthly range. Whether that substitution actually happens depends on distribution, and if the volume flows through retailers and payment apps powered by companies like Bull rather than through large banks, the competitive structure of Brazilian consumer credit shifts meaningfully.

There is also a regional-development angle. Freitas and Pires Neto built FortBrasil in Ceará, in Brazil's Northeast, a region that has produced few venture-scale fintechs relative to São Paulo. A repeat team from outside the Southeast raising from Maya Capital, Caravela and Canary is a data point on how far Brazilian venture capital has broadened its sourcing.

## The Other Side

**What happens to Bull if the consignado boom cools?** The 183.6% growth in 2025 came off a near-zero base, and analysts already expect 2026 growth to be "naturally smaller." A December survey found 46% of companies still lacked detailed knowledge of the program and 35% of participating firms had recorded delinquencies. Bull's answer is product diversification into collateralized lending and factoring, but those are different risk models requiring different infrastructure, and the company has not shipped them yet.

**Is credit-as-a-service defensible, or is it a race to the lowest fee?** Bull's differentiation is operational depth — servicing, collections, FIDC connections — rather than technology that is hard to copy. Brazil has several well-funded credit infrastructure providers, and the large banks can offer white-label consignado to the same retailers with cheaper funding. The question for the next round is take rate, not volume.

**Does US$196 million in originations this year say anything about revenue?** Origination volume is the metric the company leads with, and it is the metric investors in this category tend to discount. Bull does not disclose what it earns per real originated, who holds the credit risk, or how the FIDC economics are split with clients. A billion reais of volume on a thin, shared take rate is a very different business from the same volume on a fee-plus-performance model.

## Sources & Transparency

- [Um ano após pré-seed, Bull capta R$ 20 milhões para expandir além do crédito consignado](https://www.bloomberglinea.com.br/startups/um-ano-apos-pre-seed-bull-capta-r-20-milhoes-para-expandir-alem-do-credito-consignado?ref=theinvestorsociety.com)
- [Bull capta R$ 20M em rodada seed liderada por Maya e Caravela](https://startups.com.br/negocios/fintech/bull-capta-r-20m-em-rodada-seed-liderada-por-maya-e-caravela/?ref=theinvestorsociety.com)
- [Bull capta R$ 20 milhões para investir em plataforma de crédito e IA](https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/economia/money/negocios/bull-capta-r-20-milhoes-para-investir-em-plataforma-de-credito-e-ia/?ref=theinvestorsociety.com)
- [Bull capta R$ 20 milhões em seed com Maya e Caravela e mira R$ 1 bilhão em crédito até o fim de 2026](https://www.startupz.com.br/artigo/bull-capta-r-20-milhoes-em-seed-com-maya-e-caravela-e-mira-r-1-bilhao-em-credito-ate-o-fim-de-2026?ref=theinvestorsociety.com)