Market roundup: Shopee raises rates

🔔 The dashboard: Brazil’s benchmark stock index Ibovespa gained 1.29 percent this week. Meanwhile, the Brazilian real gained 0.32 percent against the U.S. dollar this week.

• Biggest gains: Vale (mining), +10.54 percent.
• Biggest drops: Mafrig (food), -10.46 percent.

Shopee takes action in Brazilian e-commerce slowdown

Asian e-commerce behemoth Shopee, one of the primary arms of Singapore’s Sea group, announced a 2-percent increase to its take rate in Brazil starting on September 1. Now, Shopee’s standard plan will charge sellers a 14-percent commission while premium account owners will have to pay transaction fees of 20 percent.

What else? For its top-seller program, under which certain merchants appear first in a given product search, the company introduced a new penalty, mandating that the rate of non-shipment of products be maintained below 2 percent.

• If sellers have a rate above 5 percent, their listings will no longer show up in product searches and will only be available directly at the seller’s store.

Why it matters. Since Shopee arrived in Brazil in 2019, it has been growing in the local market. According to estimates by Goldman...