Case Study: PicPay achieves rapid, scalable nationwide COVID-19 emergency aid distribution with Rasa

In the face of a pandemic, PicPay rises to the challenge of distributing aid to families across Brazil, using Rasa.

PicPay, Brazil’s largest payment app with about 20 million users, was tapped by the government to distribute emergency COVID-19 aid but faced a sudden surge in support requests, a user base with limited digital literacy, and a mandate to launch in weeks. To guide users through eligibility checks and benefit claims at scale, PicPay built a conversational AI assistant using the Rasa framework.

Working with Rasa’s Customer Success Engineering team, PicPay’s developers launched the assistant in just 10 business days; Rasa was chosen for its cost, accuracy, open‑source approach and Portuguese localization. The bot handled 3,000 transactions in the first hour, averaged roughly 100,000 users per day in week one, and continues to manage 20k–65k interactions daily—enabling nationwide aid distribution and prompting plans for further integrations with Zendesk and WhatsApp.

PicPay

Isaac Ben-Akiva

Chief Data & AI Officer