Three months after starting its operations in Brazil, Deel, a startup founded in Silicon Valley that develops solutions for global companies to hire professionals from any country, chose the country to debut in Latin America the Deel Card, a Visa prepaid credit card with dollar balance integrated to the Deel account.
The Deel Card is aimed at remote professionals hired by foreign companies that use Deel to hire and pay their collaborators, enabling them to transfer their salaries as a credit to the card. The big difference is that all the money transferred is converted and kept in dollars, even if the salary is paid in euros, reais, or any other currency.
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The proposal is that, with the card, professionals who today are paid by the Deel account can withdraw their salary and transfer it as a balance to the new card.
“Professionals will be able to transfer some or all of those funds to the Deel card, and the money stays stored in dollars, with no conversion required. And while the money stays on the card, they can use the card to make payments at any establishment that accepts the Visa flag, online or physical, in Brazil and abroad,” explains Cristiano Soares, country manager of Deel in Brazil.
Payments made with the Deel Card are converted according to the commercial exchange rate of the day. The same for transactions made in other countries – for example, if the card is used to make a payment in Argentine pesos, the conversion will be made according to the dollar exchange rate on the day.
This, according to Soares, represents a greater valuation of the card users’ money.”If I have $1,000 in my Deel card and I withdraw the entire amount on a day when the dollar is worth BRL 4.90, for example, and the following week the dollar goes to BRL 5.20, I have lost 30 cents. But with the Deel card, I can make payments and the conversion is done according to the exchange rate of the day. We have many users from other countries, where the currency is devalued, who use the card for recurring transactions and make only partial withdrawals, when necessary,” he explains.
Besides Brazil, the Deel card is also offered in the United States and some countries in Europe. The company’s plan is to expand the product’s offer to its entire base of more than 16,500 professionals who are currently paid by Deel.
Brazil is a strategic for expansion
Currently, Deel serves more than 2,500 companies and makes it possible to hire professionals from over 150 countries. In the 2021 first quarter, the company reached a GMV greater than $ 100 million. The accelerated growth dragged the attention of investors: Deel raised $206 million in three rounds in the last few months and reached a valuation of $1.25 billion.
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In Latin America, Deel is also in Mexico and Colombia, and has contracts with more than 150 companies. Operating in Brazil for three months now, the company has been targeting enterprise customers, companies with more than a thousand employees, and already has contracts with companies like Nubank, iFood, and Rocket.Chat.
According to Soares, the country is considered one of the most relevant markets for Deel, which forecasts that Brazil may account for 10% of the startup‘s revenue.
To be the market leader in Latin America, Brazil is essential. The country’s business potential is huge, there is a lot of investment coming in. When this happens, companies need to hire to grow and expand. And they need to hire well and fast. This is Deel’s purpose.
CRISTIANO SOARES, country manager IN BRAZIL
Deel’s core business is to facilitate the hiring of foreign professionals. In other words, Deel takes care of the entire hiring process and the operationalization of the compensation, observing the labor and tax regulations of each country.
To make it possible, the startup has a team of more than 250 lawyers that organizes all the labor legislation of each country in which it operates and takes care of the entire hiring process regarding contracts, payments, taxes and local fees, among others.
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According to the legal rules of each country, the employees can receive their paycheck in local currency and choose how they want to receive it: through Transferwise, bank transfer, credit card, Paypal and even bitcoin. The operational cost for the companies varies according to the volume of contracts made by the Deel platform. The cost to contractors starts at $49.
