Without exception, all games of Mega Sena, Lotomania, Timemania, among others, can only be played by credit card through Mercado Pago, a well-known payment platform of the Mercado Livre group, currently the largest company in Latin America based in Argentina. In addition to the payment system, Mercado Pago is also a digital bank, a direct competitor of Caixa Econômica.
For the website Justiça em Foco, "although it is known that these are different activities, R$ 17 million (US$ 3.3m) for a year of contract would be more than enough money for a banking institution, the size of CEF, to develop its own technology to receive these payments."
“In addition, Caixa already has an entire system for receiving payments and a sufficient bank security structure to complete this task. The renewal of this contract, which was initially signed in May 2015, still during Dilma Rouseff (PT) government, causes some strangeness,” explains the website.
In order to better understand the reasons for the agreement, the newsroom of the website Justiça em Foco contacted the press offices of Caixa and Mercado Pago.
Caixa sent the following note:
“CAIXA contracted, through a bidding process, the secure payment method service from Mercado Pago to process payments for transactions carried out on Lottery CAIXA's electronic channels (Lotteries CAIXA portal and application).
The initial contract was signed on 05/12/2015, having been renewed for another 12 (twelve) months from 05/13/2020 at a total cost of R$ 17,337,148.48 (US$ 3.361.000). When using Mercado Pago, the customer can, in addition to paying for bets placed electronically, also request the redemption of prizes for winning bets.
Mercado Pago offers, through its services, technological solutions appropriate to the needs of CAIXA and with the experience of one of the largest and most recognized electronic payment companies in the country. We also emphasize that on 08/10/2020 a Notice was published on the CAIXA Purchasing Portal for new contracting of this service (Exam 0041/2020)."
Source: Justiça em Foco
