Do I need a Brazilian company to sell there?

Not for ordinary cross-border retail, where you are the exporter and the customer is the importer. The obligations sit with the import, which is why the tax identifier and the threshold matter more than incorporation. Verify your own situation with an accountant — rules differ by what and how much you ship.

Who pays the import tax?

Normally the recipient, collected by the courier on delivery. That is exactly why it must be visible before checkout: a customer who discovers it at the door often refuses the parcel, and you lose the product and the shipping.

Does Creavela support Brazil?

Portuguese is one of the four languages the platform and storefronts run in, and the checkout can collect the tax identifier for Brazilian addresses. The supplier's shipping route and its certification status still have to be verified per product — that is a sourcing fact, not a platform setting.

Blog · September 15, 2026 · 4 min read

Selling to Brazil: the five things that work differently

Brazil rewards sellers who take it seriously and punishes those who treat it as an English-speaking market with the words swapped. Five things work differently, and four of them will stop an order outright if you ignore them.

1. The tax identifier is not optional

Imported parcels into Brazil require the recipient's tax identifier — a CPF for an individual, a CNPJ for a company. Without it the parcel can be held or refused at customs, and the order fails after you have already paid the supplier.

The fix is in your checkout, not your support inbox: collect it at the point of sale for Brazilian addresses, as a required field, with the format validated. Collecting it afterwards by email works for the customers who reply, and those are never all of them.

2. Import tax has a threshold, and it is a cliff

As verified in September 2026, low-value imports into Brazil are treated very differently above and below a fifty-US-dollar threshold: below it, federal import tax can be zero — but only for parcels shipped through platforms certified under the Remessa Conforme programme. Above the threshold the federal rate is substantially higher, and state ICMS applies on top in both cases.

Two practical consequences. First: a basket that crosses the threshold can cost the customer far more than the price difference suggests, so show the estimate before checkout rather than letting the courier surprise them. Second: whether your supplier ships through a certified platform is a real commercial fact worth verifying, not an assumption.

These rules change. Check the Receita Federal's current guidance before you write a number on your own page — and do not let any platform, including this one, be your source for a tax rate.

3. Cards are not how most people prefer to pay

Instant bank transfer — Pix — is ordinary in Brazil, and instalments on a card are expected for larger purchases in a way that has no equivalent in most European markets. A checkout that offers only an international card payment is not neutral: it excludes buyers who have the money and want to spend it.

If you cannot offer local methods yet, at least make sure the card path works cleanly with Brazilian cards and shows the price in reais, and be honest with yourself that this is a limitation rather than a preference.

4. Show the price in reais

A price the buyer must convert in their head is a price they postpone. If your store charges in dollars, show at least an estimate in reais next to it, and label it as an estimate — with the currency you actually charge in stated plainly, so nobody is surprised on their statement.

One technical caution from experience: an estimate is only as good as the exchange rate behind it. A rate that has not been refreshed in a week produces a number that is wrong in a way the customer will discover. Better to show nothing than to show a stale conversion.

5. The words are not translations

This is the one that costs the most quietly. Brazilian buyers search with Brazilian vocabulary, which is frequently not a translation of the English term. In the hair category, measured with Google Keyword Planner over the twelve months to September 2026: mega hair draws 40,500 monthly searches in Brazil, while peruca de cabelo humano — the faithful translation of "human hair wig" — draws 1,600.

A store translated word for word is invisible to the larger term. Choose the keyword from the market's own vocabulary, per market, and write the page around it. This is also why a Portuguese page should be Portuguese all the way down — product titles and descriptions included, not just the interface.

Questions

Do I need a Brazilian company to sell there?: Not for ordinary cross-border retail, where you are the exporter and the customer is the importer. The obligations sit with the import, which is why the tax identifier and the threshold matter more than incorporation. Verify your own situation with an accountant — rules differ by what and how much you ship.
Who pays the import tax?: Normally the recipient, collected by the courier on delivery. That is exactly why it must be visible before checkout: a customer who discovers it at the door often refuses the parcel, and you lose the product and the shipping.
Does Creavela support Brazil?: Portuguese is one of the four languages the platform and storefronts run in, and the checkout can collect the tax identifier for Brazilian addresses. The supplier's shipping route and its certification status still have to be verified per product — that is a sourcing fact, not a platform setting.

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