About Stone
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in São Paulo, Stone is a leading Brazilian financial technology and software company that provides integrated payment processing, digital banking, and credit solutions for merchants. The company empowers entrepreneurs by offering technology and financial services designed to help micro, small, and medium-sized businesses grow and thrive.
With over 16,000 employees and nearly 3 million clients, Stone has built a strong reputation for speed, reliability, and a customer-centric approach – striving to respond to client needs within 5 seconds. Its comprehensive platform brings together payments, banking, credit, and business management tools, offering customers a simple, seamless way to manage their operations across in-store, online, and mobile channels.
Stone is recognized for its intuitive technology, hands-on support, and unwavering focus on solving problems and delighting customers. Listed on Nasdaq since 2018, the company continues to expand financial inclusion and deliver innovative, customer-driven solutions across Brazil.
Key Points
- Simplified hybrid and multicloud operations by using Megaport as its central network hub.
- Boosted operational reliability and reduced latency with Megaport Cloud Router (MCR) and 100G ports.
- Improved network resiliency by virtualizing the network and removing the data center single points of failure with Data Center Interconnect (DCI) and Megaport Internet.
- Reduced connectivity costs with Megaport’s Network as a Service (NaaS) model.
- Gained the ability to scale quickly across Brazil and the US.
Case Study Snapshot
Stone needed to connect its hybrid, multicloud environment and link third-party Brazilian and US data centers without costly, standalone data center routing. By deploying MCR, 100G ports, DCI, Megaport Internet, and both local and international connectivity, Stone made Megaport the central hub of its upgraded virtual network.
With all intercloud and data center traffic now running through Megaport, Stone benefits from faster operation, greater resiliency, and lower costs than ever, making Megaport Stone’s trusted network partner.
Challenges
Siloed infrastructure
Stone initially operated with a mix of hybrid environments and cloud-native subsidiaries – but connecting AWS, Azure, GCP, and the other providers they relied on with physical data centers was proving complex, expensive, and risky.
Data center single points of failure
Routing between cloud providers required passing through a small number of key data centers. This setup introduced latency, downtime risk, and single points of failure, as any data center outage would result in connectivity loss to the critical cloud services Stone’s customers depend on.
High costs and limited options in Brazil
Stone relied on third-party providers to link Brazilian and US data centers, but these connections were expensive and unreliable. In financial transactions, milliseconds matter, so even the slightest performance issues directly impact customer experience.
Solution
Megaport as the central network hub
Stone deployed MCR as the central hub for all interconnections, simplifying its network architecture and removing its dependency on data centers. The team initially deployed 10G ports, quickly expanding their setup by adding 100G ports and multiple Megaport solutions to create a redundant, reliable network spanning North and South America.
Stone’s solution now includes:
- MCRs in Brazil and across the US for hybrid and multicloud interconnection
- DCIs within and between data centers across both regions
- international connectivity between Brazil and US MCRs cloud connectivity to AWS, Azure, and GCP
- internet connection for flexible traffic management.
This setup has allowed Stone to integrate Megaport as its trusted network partner, consolidating connectivity, reducing complexity, and gaining resilience.
Benefits
Lower latency and faster approvals
By optimizing connectivity between its cloud providers and on-premises environments, Stone reduced transaction latency. This improvement helped maintain its reputation as one of Brazil’s leading fintech providers.
Greater stability and resiliency
Megaport eliminated Stone’s reliance on data centers, providing a virtual routing hub and eliminating single points of failure. With MCR as the backbone, Stone gained a more reliable and fault-tolerant architecture.
Reduced costs and simplified operations
Replacing expensive third-party links with Megaport’s NaaS model lowered costs and reduced operational overhead. A single, cost-effective partner now underpins Stone’s entire hybrid, multicloud network.
Scalability and growth
Megaport’s modular, on-demand model allows Stone to scale bandwidth easily, add new services, and expand into new regions without lengthy provisioning cycles. This agility supports rapid business growth and technology adoption.
Future Plans
After so much success with Megaport, Stone is now evaluating Megaport NAT Gateway to strengthen security controls, simplify internet egress by routing traffic through centralized firewalls, and reduce costs by avoiding expensive cloud-provider egress fees. NAT Gateway will also help resolve network overlaps across multicloud environments, further simplifying operations and supporting Stone’s hybrid architecture.
“Megaport has become the central hub of our network, replacing complex, fragile connections with a simple, resilient architecture that scales with our business.” – Igor Melhorance, Site Reliability Engineering Manager, Stone