dLocal (DLO) is the kind of stock the market rarely prices comfortably. It operates in emerging markets, deals with cross-border payments, foreign exchange, compliance, and local payment methods, and serves large enterprise merchants that can shift a lot of volume very quickly. That mix can look messy from a distance, which is exactly why the shares can stay cheap even while the business keeps compounding.
The more interesting question is whether investors are treating dLocal like a fragile payment processor when it is actually something closer to infrastructure. GreenDot Stocks currently shows the shares at $11.86 against a blended fair value of $13.84, or 16.7% upside. That is not a deep-distress setup. But for a business that grew total payment volume 59.6% in 2025 and then 73% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, it is still a compelling entry point.
What dLocal Actually Built
dLocal's core pitch is simple: one API, one platform, and one contract that lets global merchants accept payments, send payouts, and settle funds across emerging markets without building a patchwork of local entities and integrations. In the 2025 annual report, the company said it operated across 44 countries, supported more than 160 pay-in methods and 939 pay-out methods, and served more than 760 merchants.
The hard part of emerging-market payments is not just moving money. It is managing all the local complexity wrapped around the money. Payment methods vary by country. FX rules vary by country. Tax handling, compliance, fraud controls, licensing, settlement times, and bank relationships vary by country. Large merchants do not want to solve that country by country. They want a single layer that absorbs the mess for them.
That is what makes dLocal more interesting than a plain vanilla processor. The company is selling simplicity into markets where simplicity is unusually valuable. Its merchant base includes large global names like Shein, Temu, Google, Uber, Spotify, and Payoneer, and enterprise merchants accounted for 99% of 2025 TPV. When a global merchant can add new countries, new payment methods, or payout rails without a fresh integration each time, dLocal becomes harder to displace than the market sometimes assumes.
Why The Moat Looks Better Than It First Appears
The moat here is not a classic consumer brand moat. It is operational.
dLocal has spent a decade building local payment connectivity, regulatory know-how, merchant integrations, fraud tooling, FX capabilities, and settlement infrastructure in markets where all of those pieces are fragmented. The company says its top 50 merchants used the platform across about 12 countries and 50 pay-in methods on average in 2025. Once a merchant is plugged into that network, replacing dLocal is not just a pricing exercise. It is a technical, operational, and compliance project.
That does not make the moat invincible. Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, banks, and local providers all compete somewhere on the map. But dLocal does not need to beat every payment company everywhere. It needs to remain unusually good at the messy corridors where global merchants most want a specialist. So far, the operating results suggest that position is holding.
The Growth Engine Is Still Very Much Alive
If the stock were cheap because growth had already rolled over, the story would be much less interesting. But the numbers still look strong.
In 2025, total payment volume reached $40.8 billion, up 59.6% year over year. Revenue rose 47% to $1.093 billion. Profit for the year climbed 63% to $196.9 million. Net revenue retention reached 144%, which is a strong signal that existing merchants are not just staying but expanding their use of the platform.
Then the first quarter of 2026 stayed hot. TPV reached $14.1 billion, up 73% year over year. Revenue increased 55% to $335.9 million, and gross profit hit a record $118.7 million. Management also kept full-year guidance unchanged. This was not a one-quarter burst followed by caution; it was another quarter that reinforced the broader growth story.
That growth is also not coming from one narrow feature. dLocal keeps expanding geographically, broadening its payout and orchestration products, layering in platform tools, and leaning into adjacent capabilities like stablecoin settlement where it can use the same infrastructure and compliance stack. The recent Stablecoin Full launch and the Damisa APAC settlement partnership are good examples of that playbook. They show a business that is trying to deepen its role in money movement, not one that is sitting still and hoping volume alone carries the model.
Why The Stock Still Gets Discounted
The reason dLocal does not trade like a clean premium software name is that the market sees real risk, and some of that skepticism is justified.
Customer concentration is the first big issue. The top 10 customers represented 61% of 2025 revenue. That is meaningful. If a few large merchants reroute volume, negotiate harder, or simply grow more slowly, the impact can show up quickly.
The second issue is geographic and regulatory risk. dLocal earns most of its revenue in emerging markets, with Latin America still the largest exposure. The 2025 annual report notes that 80% of revenue came from Latin America, and it lays out the usual list of worries: currency volatility, capital controls, changing licensing rules, tax disputes, political instability, and operational friction in markets like Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
The third issue is that payment economics can look noisier as the company scales. In the first quarter of 2026, TPV grew much faster than gross profit, which pushed gross profit over TPV lower. That is not automatically a problem, but it does remind investors that product and geographic mix can change the economics quickly. Payments are not a software model where every extra dollar falls through at the same rate.
There was also a one-off prior-period tax adjustment in the first quarter of 2026 that depressed reported net income. Management framed that as non-recurring, but it still reinforces the broader market worry that emerging-market financial infrastructure will never deserve a full valuation because something always looks messy.
Why That Discount May Be Too Wide
The better way to frame dLocal is not that the risks are fake. It is that the stock may already discount them too heavily.
Third-party quote data recently showed the stock trading around 18 times trailing earnings and roughly 12 times forward earnings. That is not a demanding valuation for a business that just grew revenue 46.6% in 2025, is still posting 50% plus TPV growth, and ended 2025 with $719.9 million in cash and cash equivalents. The company also generated $190.7 million in adjusted free cash flow in 2025 and has already shown a willingness to return capital through dividends and buybacks.
That is a different setup from the typical fast-growing fintech story. Many fast-growing fintech stories burn cash, rely on outside capital, or need heroic assumptions to justify their price. dLocal is different. It is already profitable, already cash generative, and still growing at a rate that most payment companies would envy. If growth slows from here, the current valuation can still work. If the company keeps proving that its local infrastructure model is durable, the rerating case gets stronger.
GreenDot Stocks also captures that balance well. The screen is not saying dLocal is risk free. It is saying that the current setup still offers a favorable quality-to-price tradeoff.
| Current GreenDot Stocks read | Value |
|---|---|
| Current share price | $11.86 |
| Blended fair value | $13.84 |
| Implied upside | 16.7% |
| Business quality read | Green dot business |
| Value read | Undervalued |
| Selected screen strengths | Rule of 40 (next) 95.4%, Rule of 40 (current) 108.7%, FCF-ROIC 68.7% |
Those are not the numbers of a business that only looks good because the story sounds exciting. They point to a company with real operating strength behind the narrative.
The Bottom Line
dLocal is interesting because it sits in a part of fintech that still looks structurally underbuilt. Global merchants want access to the next wave of digital consumers, but emerging-market payments remain fragmented, local, and operationally difficult. dLocal has spent ten years turning that complexity into a product.
That does not eliminate the risks. Merchant concentration, FX volatility, regulatory change, and margin mix are all real. But the market often treats those risks as if they make the business uninvestable. The operating record suggests something else: they make the business harder to own emotionally, which is often where the opportunity comes from.
For investors willing to accept some volatility, dLocal still looks like a strong business selling at a valuation that leaves room for upside. If you want more names that combine quality, growth, and reasonable valuation, visit the GreenDot Stocks screener.