Girabank, a fintech owned by Carlinhos Maia, is accused of defrauding customers

Girabank, a fintech owned by Carlinhos Maia, is accused of defrauding customers


According to Girabank, the Instagram account was “sabotaged” by a former contractor, but the baffle did not affect the operation

Created last year, Girabank arrived on the market with the difference of being the brand of the influencer Carlinhos Maia, a personality who has more than 26.5 million followers on the Instagram. However, things have taken a complicated path for fintech, which is accused of defrauding account holders and has even been exposed by former employees on social networks.




It all started last week when the Instagram of the company began exhibiting prints from dissatisfied customers. “This account has not been hacked, just the bank’s marketing team is tired of being deceived,” reads a text that appeared on the bank’s official profile on the social network. Quiprocó was news on the site OutFrom IG.

According to the report of startupsthe profile posts were from Gus Lara, a marketing advice influencer with around 90,000 followers, who has provided services to the company, and he posted stories on his personal profile talking about the bank, saying he would expose the truth about the fintech he has Carlinhos Maia as partner.

In posts published on your profile and hacked account of turnbank – which in some cases referred to the personal profile of the influencer – shared the printouts of the complaints made by customers according to which the digital bank “stole” money from the accounts of current account holders, “masking them” among operational errors. Among the problems presented there would be difficulties in making payments via pix, blocked accounts without repayment of the sums deposited and lack of service from the bank.

Among the reports exposed by the influencer, the sums lost by users range from BRL 500 to more than BRL 8 thousand lost in investments. The prints are circulating on social networks, even if they are no longer available on Gus Lara’s profile.

To defend himself against the accusations, Carlinhos Maia himself published a position statement on his social profiles over the weekend. “Since the morning I see some portals to talk about turnbank. Don’t believe us, we’re not stealing anyone’s money, it’s a digital bank like any other bank that has its problems, its flaws, it goes offline and comes back. If he stole money from so many people, it would come to light. As far as I know, because my part is to advertise the turnbank. I’m just a member,” she said.

fintech in the gossip

Having as a partner a well-known influencer, always featured on gossip sites, the turnbank he ended up joining the circus. Over the weekend, several more celebrity-centric vehicles echoed complaints made against neobank, which spooked other firm associates.

“Because we have a social media personality as a partner, these complaints have reached greater proportions than we imagined. Itau it also receives complaints from angry customers, who accuse the bank of stealing their money, but nobody tags Roberto Setúbal in the posts,” says Pedro Marrey Sanchez, founder and one of the main partners, in a conversation with the startups.

In addition to Carlinhos Maia as one of the investor-partners, the founders of the company are entrepreneurs Pedro Marrey Sanchez (founder of fintech Prudent bank), Miguel Teixeira (founder of Concept franchise group) and Luiz Guzman (entrepreneur in the franchise, startup and restaurant sector).

“All this turbulence (on social media) has scared us a lot, as it affects the bank’s image. As far as the core business is concerned, we are quite calm, as we don’t have any security problems”, concluded Pedro.

Speaking of image, the turnbank stated that the “bafafá” has not poured into the current public offering he is making on the crowdfunding platform hub division. In December, fintech opened funding, aiming to raise BRL 10 million for 2.55% of the business. The project is the result of a partnership with Raketothe “venture market” launched in August by Fred Santoro (ex-AWS).

Invasion and denunciations

“The official account of Instagram has been hacked and posts published for the sole and exclusive purpose of causing havoc, doubt and confusion. This has triggered negative comments about the instabilities on our platform,” the bank said in a statement.

Pedro Marrey says the sabotage of the company’s profile came from Gus Lara, who worked as a service provider for the marketing team of the turnbank and “kidnapped” the profile of Instagram from society. According to him, the account had not been recovered to date (27). “We’re about to get a court order to regain access,” he says. Wanted by the report startupsGus Lara did not respond to submitted questions.

Regarding complaints about retained accounts and lost valuables, the company highlighted that the bank operates in compliance with the rules of the Central Bank. “Occasional incidents, when they occur, are quickly identified and resolved without compromising the security of information, transactions and funds deposited in the account,” said the turnbank in a statement.

As explained by the founder of turnbankthe bank has 99.7% of its claims in the Complaints here responses, most of which are related to fintech’s current difficulties in sustaining demand for new cards. Currently, the company’s BaaS vendor is Bankly (old banking access).

In fact, according to the executive, all the repercussions ended up having positive effects on the bank. “After the answers given by Carlinhos Maia on the dispute, we have registered a peak of new customers”, reveals the manager. “We started with a project for 200,000 customers, and now we are dealing with more than 1.5 million interested users. It’s a new universe for us,” says Pedro about the challenges inside and outside his bank’s core business .

Source: Terra

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