Both Grupo ZAP and OLX Bring Out New Offerings in Brazil

The two leading portal companies in Brazil have both improved their offerings for customers in the last week. Grupo ZAP, which operates leading Brazilian portals zap and Vivareal and whose purchase by OLX Group is currently under scrutiny by the Brazilian Antitrust Agency, has announced a new collaboration with marketplace lending platform Nexoos whereby the group’s agent customers will be able to receive part of their commission upfront as opposed to on the handover of keys. 

Currently, the agent receives a commission on the completion of the transaction which can take up to six months after all documents have been signed. Grupo ZAP’s new partnership with Nexoos means that agents can receive part of the commission in advance and anticipate their cashflow. Although the new offering will only be available to agents that meet both annual revenue and liquidity requirements, it will be a welcome relief for many who have been struggling to manage cashflow in a country ravaged by Covid and the economic uncertainty it brings. The service is currently undergoing testing with a select group of agents and the hope is that the scheme will benefit hundreds of cash strapped agents in the near future.

Meanwhile, OLX Group, which hopes to complete the merger with Grupo ZAP, has launched both a payment system and a delivery service. The market leader for property as well as auto advertising in Brazil has until now only allowed payment and delivery directly between buyers and sellers. The payment system will allow the seller to receive the whole of the price upfront, even if the buyer is paying in installments and aims to reduce person to person cash purchases which have been the prevailing method of payment on OLX transactions. The delivery system will be run in partnership with the Brazilian postal service and is another way that OLX is seeking to take the friction out of user to user transactions. 

OLX’s CEO Andries Oudshoorn spoke at the Global Online Marketplaces Summit last month about some of the ways his company is looking to cut through the bureaucracy inherent in the Brazilian system and remove friction from transactions. See the talk Andries gave here on our Youtube channel.