By Brazil Stock Guide — A Brazilian shopper ordering a phone case, kitchen gadget or pair of sneakers from an overseas seller might assume the journey belongs entirely to Amazon, Mercado Libre, Shopee or Shein.
The package often tells a different story.
Behind the familiar apps and storefronts sits a dense network of Chinese logistics groups, freight forwarders, postal operators and Brazilian couriers. Many work for more than one platform at a time. Some are giants in Asia. Others are virtually unknown to the consumers whose parcels they carry.
Together, they form the largely invisible infrastructure behind Brazil’s cross-border e-commerce boom.
Brazil Stock Guide mapped the operators and intermediaries linked to the country’s largest marketplaces using records filed with Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service under Remessa Conforme, the customs program that allows certified platforms to collect import taxes at checkout and transmit shipment information before parcels reach the country.
The filings offer a rare look beneath the checkout screen.
And new documents published Tuesday show that the pipes connecting the world’s largest e-commerce platforms to Brazil are becoming increasingly intertwined.
Amazon has added Hangzhou Cainiao Supply Chain Management, part of Alibaba’s logistics ecosystem, to the certified structure available for its international shipments into Brazil.
The arrangement links Cainiao to the country through Correios, Brazil’s state-owned postal service, and Cainiao Express.
Cainiao cargo aircraft: the company’s air network is one of the links connecting international sellers with Brazilian consumers in cross-border e-commerce. (Courtesy)
The link is striking.
Alibaba’s AliExpress competes directly with Amazon for online shoppers. Yet Alibaba’s logistics ecosystem can now form part of Amazon’s authorized supply chain into Latin America’s largest consumer market.
Amazon also added a route involving S.F. Express International, based in Singapore, with Anjun Courier and Cainiao Express handling the Brazilian leg. Another newly listed arrangement involves Uruguay-based Mailatinamerica.
J&T Express Brazil was added to an existing route involving Hong Kong-based Lion eCommerce Logistics. Amazon’s previous filing, from March, listed only Correios and Tex Courier on that route.
The documents don’t reveal how many parcels move through each operator, or whether every authorized route is heavily used.
What they do reveal is the range of logistics options sitting behind Amazon’s international checkout.
That network was already extensive.
Amazon’s certified structure included DHL, SkyPostal, Cross Border Hub and Bringer, alongside Asia-focused operators such as Royallway Supply Chain Management, Shenzhen Anjun Logistics and YunExpress.
One route disclosed in March, for example, connected Shenzhen Qianhai YunExpress Logistics to Shenzhen Anjun, and from there to Correios and Anjun Courier in Brazil.
Cainiao’s arrival makes the picture more revealing still.
E-commerce ecosystems that look fiercely separate on a smartphone are beginning to share the same infrastructure behind the scenes.
Amazon declined to comment.
Different storefronts, familiar pipes
Amazon is hardly alone. The certified cross-border network of Mercado Libre — known as Mercado Livre in Brazil — includes Cainiao, Anjun, Correios, Tex Courier, Phoenex and Mile Express. Shopee uses Cainiao, Anjun, Correios and SHPX, its own logistics arm. Shein works with Anjun, Correios, Flogistics, Phoenex and Tex Courier. AliExpress also uses Cainiao, Anjun, Correios, Phoenex and Tex Courier.
The lists don’t mean the companies move their packages in identical ways, nor do they indicate which operator handles the most volume.
But the overlap is hard to miss.
At the consumer-facing end of the business, marketplaces spend heavily to differentiate themselves through apps, loyalty programs, delivery promises, advertising and seller tools.
Behind the screen, the same names keep reappearing.
Cainiao. Anjun. Correios. Tex Courier. Phoenex.
The storefronts compete. The pipes are increasingly shared.
The companies behind the checkout button
The logistics groups themselves play very different roles.
Cainiao, created within Alibaba’s ecosystem, has grown into one of the world’s largest cross-border logistics networks, with warehouses, sorting centers and international routes spanning more than 200 countries and regions.
In Brazil, Cainiao Express is authorized to handle express shipments through the airports of Guarulhos and Viracopos, two of the country’s main international cargo gateways.
Anjun appears repeatedly in the supply chains of Amazon, Mercado Libre, Shopee, Shein and AliExpress.
The China-founded logistics specialist says it processes more than 400,000 items a day in Brazil, offering services that range from consolidated imports and warehousing to last-mile delivery.
Anjun truck in operation: the company is among the logistics providers connecting international shipments to final deliveries in Brazil. (Courtesy)
The addition of J&T Express to Amazon’s structure brings another major Asian logistics group into the mix.
Founded in Southeast Asia, J&T has expanded rapidly overseas and says its Brazilian network reaches all 5,570 municipalities. It also offers customs-clearance services and products tailored to Remessa Conforme.
Some names buried in customs filings are more familiar than they initially appear.
Tex Courier is the legal name of Total Express, one of Brazil’s largest private e-commerce delivery companies.
Phoenex Cargo operates road-and-air logistics and has developed services specifically for marketplaces and international parcels, including transportation and support for import flows.
And then there are the Correios.
Despite a deep financial and operational crisis, Brazil’s state-owned postal company remains one of the central physical links in the country’s cross-border e-commerce chain, repeatedly appearing in the certified networks of some of the world’s largest marketplaces.
The customs records, then, don’t show a random collection of contractors.
They show a layered supply chain: Asian logistics giants built to move goods out of China, international freight intermediaries, and Brazilian operators responsible for clearing, sorting and delivering parcels.
That machinery allows a purchase made in seconds on a phone in São Paulo to set off a chain that may begin thousands of miles away.
And that is increasingly where the battle is being fought.
The difficult part of cross-border e-commerce is no longer simply finding a cheap product. It is getting that product out of a warehouse in China, Hong Kong or the U.S., through customs and into a Brazilian home quickly enough that the consumer barely notices the distance.
Mercado Libre moves closer to China
Few companies illustrate the collapse of the old distinctions better than Mercado Libre.
The company was founded in Argentina, dominates Brazilian e-commerce and has spent years building one of Latin America’s most sophisticated domestic logistics networks.
Now it is moving deeper into China.
Mercado Libre operates a fulfillment center there where thousands of merchants can store inventory before sending products overseas.
Its cross-border gross merchandise volume rose 60% from a year earlier in constant currency in the second quarter of 2026, while Brazil, Argentina and smaller markets grew at triple-digit rates.
Volume handled by the China operation surged 170% from the previous quarter, according to the company.
Mercado Libre did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
The logic is straightforward: put inventory closer to China’s export gateways, cut delivery times, reduce cancellations and make an imported product feel less like an import.
That makes the traditional distinction between a “Brazilian” marketplace and a “Chinese” one increasingly difficult to sustain.
A merchant in China can place goods inside Mercado Libre’s fulfillment network, connect to cross-border carriers and sell to a shopper in São Paulo through the same app that shopper uses to buy from a merchant a few miles away.
The marketplace becomes more than a digital shopping mall. It starts to look like a global distribution layer.
Brazil unwinds its “blouse tax”
All of this is happening just as Brazil changes the economics of low-value imports once again.
In August 2024, the country imposed a 20% federal import tax on purchases worth up to $50 made through companies enrolled in Remessa Conforme.
The levy became known locally as the taxa das blusinhas — literally, the “little blouse tax” — a nickname born from the inexpensive fashion items that had come to symbolize Brazil’s surge in overseas online shopping.
The name was lighthearted. The political fight was not. Brazilian retailers and manufacturers argued that platforms selling low-value products directly from overseas had enjoyed an unfair tax advantage over businesses carrying inventory and paying taxes locally.
The 20% levy was intended to narrow that gap. It remained in place for nearly two years.
Then Brasília reversed course.
Since May 12, purchases of up to $50 through companies enrolled in Remessa Conforme have again faced a zero federal import-tax rate. State-level ICMS sales taxes still apply.
Congress last week approved legislation preserving the zero rate, although the measure still awaits presidential sanction.
The shift instantly makes the infrastructure built by Amazon, Mercado Libre and their rivals more valuable.
A warehouse in China, another carrier contract or a faster customs route becomes more important when a $20 or $40 imported purchase loses a 20% federal tax penalty.
Shein, which opposed the levy, told Brazil Stock Guide that removing the tax was “an important achievement” for Brazilian consumers, particularly lower-income households.
The company said the change increases purchasing power and gives families greater choice in how they spend their income.
Amazon, meanwhile, had already been widening its international assortment.
Since early 2025, Brazilian shoppers have been able to buy more than 40 million additional products sold by Amazon in the U.S. directly through Amazon.com.br.
The latest customs filing suggests Amazon is broadening the logistics network capable of supporting that international offer as well.
The old labels stop working
When Brazil debated the taxa das blusinhas, the dispute was often framed in simple terms. Brazilian retailers were on one side. Chinese marketplaces were on the other. The supply chains now taking shape don’t fit neatly into either camp.
Shein says its Brazilian strategy combines cross-border commerce with the expansion of a local marketplace. The company says it now has more than 50,000 Brazilian sellers, while continuing to use its global on-demand production model for international orders.
Shein also says it became the first international platform to operate its own bonded customs area at São Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport, allowing it to speed up the processing of incoming parcels.
Shopee presents a different mix. Although it uses Cainiao and Anjun for international shipments, its Brazilian business is overwhelmingly local. The company says roughly 3 million sellers operate on its marketplace in the country and account for 95% of sales. To serve them, Shopee has built a domestic network of 26 distribution centers, more than 200 logistics hubs and roughly 5,000 local service points.
The model emerging across the sector is therefore less about choosing between “domestic” and “imported” and more about being able to move seamlessly between the two.
Local inventory can win on speed. Overseas inventory can win on price or assortment. The advantage belongs to the marketplace that can make the difference almost invisible to the shopper. Remessa Conforme began as a tax and customs-compliance system. Participating companies collect taxes at checkout and transmit shipment data before goods reach Brazil.
But it has also become something larger: a regulatory framework through which marketplaces can plug overseas sellers directly into the Brazilian consumer market. The biggest shift, then, may not be Amazon adding Cainiao or Mercado Libre building a fulfillment center in China.
It is that the physical infrastructure beneath Brazilian e-commerce is starting to look less like a collection of competing networks and more like a shared global utility. The storefronts on consumers’ phones still fight for the order. The parcel may travel through the same pipes.
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