Case Study: How Espresso Labs Built Licita Mais Brasil, a Real-Time Bidding Platform

In short: Espresso Labs designed and built Licita Mais Brasil, an electronic public-bidding platform that combines real-time negotiation, integration with Brazilian government systems, and payment processing. Launched already compliant with the law and integrated with PIX, the platform reached operational break-even in under six months, with 500+ registered users and outstanding feedback on speed and usability.

The client and the opportunity

Public procurement in Brazil is a massive market — roughly R$129 billion in 2021 — and one of the country's biggest economic engines, with demand from companies of every size, from multinationals to small businesses.

Licita Mais Brasil (LMB) set out to change how Brazilians experience public bidding. Its founders had deep experience in the procurement market and worked closely with municipalities, procurement officers, and bidders. They spotted a clear gap: existing systems were slow, unstable, and offered a poor user experience. What the market lacked was a solution uniting security, performance, and connectivity with other systems.

LMB defined three goals for the platform:

• Make participating in tenders fast and easy for companies;
• Make the process more practical for procurement officers and support teams;
• Make public bidding more transparent for ordinary citizens.

The client understood the market deeply but had no technical team to build the product. The two biggest challenges were clear: technical complexity and time to market.

The challenge

Platforms that depend on real-time interaction between users are among the hardest to build. Licita Mais Brasil could not fail: each tender can involve millions of reais in taxpayer money, demanding rigorous fraud protection and legal compliance. The system also had to serve very different journeys — individual bidders, corporate bidders (Brazilian company types SA, LTDA, and ME), procurement officers, competent authorities, support staff, and citizens.

There was also a race against time. Competitors were already developing new systems, and launching late — or with an inferior product — would mean surrendering the market. Given these stakes, the project was led by a dedicated technology manager from day one.

The approach: the Espresso Methodology

LMB came prepared. It delivered a 50-page specification covering every business rule, plus spreadsheets, flowcharts, design references, and a complete feature list. In effect, the client had already completed the Research and Inception stages of the Espresso Methodology. Our team only had to filter the insights and confirm details with LMB's leadership, letting the project move quickly into the UI Design phase.

The design priority was simplicity: an interface intuitive for every type of user, consistent with each process's user journey and flowcharts. After UI Design, the work was handed off to the engineering team, which had been architecting the system in parallel.

Biweekly meetings with the client proved decisive. During development, the government changed laws that altered the logic of certain processes; thanks to that close collaboration, we adjusted the rules quickly and avoided rework. All of the client's domain know-how was translated into code logic — a combination that added real value to the final experience.

The decision that changed billing: PIX and boleto

The original plan was to bill via credit card. Midway through the project, while interviewing future customers, LMB discovered that credit cards wouldn't fully meet users' needs. Around the same time, PIX — Brazil's instant payment system — had just launched and was available for integration. Aligning with Espresso, we swapped credit card for boleto (bank slip) and PIX, and the platform went live already integrated with Brazil's most modern payment method.

Integrations and compliance

While older systems were still struggling to meet new regulations, Licita Mais Brasil launched fully compliant with the law, integrated with:

• PNCP (Brazil's National Public Procurement Portal);
• The +Brasil government platform;
• SintegraWS (tax-data lookup);
• PIX and boleto for payment processing.

In negotiations worth millions, every millisecond matters — so performance was a core focus of the entire engineering effort. After development, Espresso Labs' QA team ran homologation with special attention to stability and bug fixing, ensuring the Espresso Labs standard of quality.

The results

Within the first six months after launch, Licita Mais Brasil delivered:

• Operational break-even (including Espresso's support and evolution service);
• More than 50 bidding processes registered;
• More than 500 registered users;
• Excellent user feedback on performance and ease of use;
• Stability even under high concurrent data load.

Recognizing that the platform would need to evolve continuously to stay ahead of competitors, LMB also engaged Espresso Labs' system evolution service through an hours-based package.

Frequently asked questions

Who built Licita Mais Brasil? The platform was built by Espresso Labs, a São Paulo–based software house, from the specification and market know-how of Licita Mais Brasil's founders.

What is Licita Mais Brasil? It is an electronic public-bidding platform that combines real-time negotiation, integration with government systems, and payment processing, focused on security, performance, and simplicity.

Which systems does the platform integrate with? With PNCP (Brazil's National Public Procurement Portal), the +Brasil platform, SintegraWS, and the PIX and boleto payment methods.

What results did the project achieve? Within six months of launch, the platform reached operational break-even, 50+ bidding processes, and 500+ registered users, with excellent feedback on performance and stability.

Technology worthy of a billion-real market

Licita Mais Brasil brings together some of the most complex challenges in software: real-time negotiation, integration of multiple government APIs, and payment processing. Starting from LMB's vision, Espresso Labs delivered one of the most modern bidding systems in Brazil — secure, fast, and ready to scale.