Pedro Conrade is not a simple entrepreneur to translate. It is a mix of humility and high execution capacity. Simplicity and ambition. Ahead of Neon, he faced the complexity of creating one of the first digital banks in Brazil. There are already a few billion reais transacted and almost 1 million new accounts opened every month. The trigger for creating the scale-up came with your bank's invoice five years ago.

After blowing up his checking account by R$1.00, Pedro had been shocked when he found out that his bank would charge a fee of R$46.00 to start using the overdraft. When he started to investigate his bills, he realized that he spent a minimum wage every year on bank fees when his salary was little more than a minimum wage a month.

The outrage was huge. Pedro wondered how much money Brazilians lost every year with abusive bank fees. When he did this calculation, he realized that there was a strong enough motivation to create his new business.

Neon Payments is a Brazilian fintech founded in 2016 with the mission to unite technology and design to redesign and simplify people's financial experience, in addition to helping them to better manage their own money. The company, founded by Pedro Conrade, was born as a digital account and today offers a complete account, with all the services of a traditional bank. Since its founding, Neon has made important acquisitions to broaden the scope of its service offering. In September 2019, the fintech announced the acquisition of the startup MEI Fácil, a platform that offers financial services, education and helps with bureaucracy to individual microentrepreneurs. More recently, in July 2020, it also acquired Magliano, the oldest brokerage in Brazil, to replicate the digital experience it brought to banking products in its investments. Neon, in five years, has already contributed to savings of more than R$1.2 billion in savings for its customers. Currently, the company has more than 12 million customers.