On September 24, 2026, at Mercado Livre Experience, Mercado Livre announced Envios Agora: delivery within 60 minutes in the city of São Paulo, for products weighing up to 15 kg, collected from the seller's address by the company's own courier network. The next day, the platform's own pharmacy began selling medicines for which a prescription is retained, and partner pharmacies will join the marketplace starting in October, according to E-Commerce Brasil. For online sellers, the immediate effect is different: a customer who receives an order in one hour on one platform starts to consider two days slow everywhere else.
This article sets out what the announcement requires from Mercado Livre sellers, what Brazilian law and Anvisa currently allow for a pharmacy seeking to sell online, and what a store without its own fleet can do about customer delivery expectations. Customer communication is in your hands: confirm the order immediately, give updates at each stage and address delays before they become complaints.
In ChatFunnel, a store connected to its ecommerce platform receives order statuses in the CRM and uses these events to trigger payment, shipping and delivery updates on WhatsApp. An AI agent answers "where is my order" using the store's knowledge base. A message sequence that covers delays appears below.
Watch the full video about Mercado Livre delivering within one hour and prepare your store for this new phase.
What Mercado Livre announced and the rules for sellers
The figures below come from the September 24 announcement and subsequent coverage. The 25-minute rule was not announced on stage: it appears in Mercado Livre's technical documentation for store integrations, cited by Antihype on September 25. The page requires a Mercado Livre account login, so check the text in your account before setting up your process.
| Item | Announced rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer delivery time | Delivery within 60 minutes, with progress tracked in the app | E-Commerce Brasil, September 24, 2026 |
| Seller deadline | 25 minutes between sale confirmation and dispatch; the courier collects from the store address (cross-docking model) | Antihype, September 25, 2026 |
| Eligible product | Up to 15 kg; no side over 50 cm; combined height, width and length up to 100 cm | E-Commerce Brasil and Antihype |
| Who can join | Sellers selected by Mercado Livre in São Paulo neighborhoods; no public application form at this stage | Antihype, September 25, 2026 |
| Medicines | Medicines requiring a retained prescription, including antibiotics and GLP-1 pens, at the platform's own pharmacy since September 25; coverage in Greater São Paulo; partner pharmacies from the first half of October, with a target of 20 by year-end | E-Commerce Brasil, September 24, 2026 |
| Prescription | The buyer uploads the prescription; a pharmacist validates it before order release; the platform keeps a copy for two months, then deletes it | Canaltech and Guia da Farmácia, September 25, 2026 |
Before the announcement, medicine bought on the platform took up to three hours to arrive in São Paulo city, according to InvestNews. The reduction to 60 minutes puts the marketplace alongside the delivery times already advertised by pharmacy chains: Panvel advertises express delivery within 60 minutes by postal code, and Droga Raia delivers the same day until 10 p.m. For convenience orders, Canaltech notes that iFood Turbo promises up to 20 minutes and Amazon Now up to 15 minutes in eight cities.
How your customer's delivery expectations change
Delivery time has become a purchase criterion as well as a logistics issue. The September 26 Loja Digital newsletter sums up the effect: when a platform offers one-hour delivery, shoppers begin to consider two days slow. This applies to customers shopping on your own site after seeing a 60-minute promise elsewhere.
The risk of missing the deadline has been measured. During Black Friday 2025, delayed delivery accounted for 23.25% of complaints registered on Brazil's Reclame Aqui between Wednesday and Friday morning, and products not received accounted for another 12.68%, according to Olhar Digital using platform data. Many of these complaints begin with an order that is delayed without notice, and silence matters more than the delay.
There is another, less visible effect. Mercado Livre said at the event that its sales assistant answers about 60% of buyer questions, according to E-Commerce Brasil. A customer accustomed to an immediate marketplace reply expects the same pace when messaging your store on WhatsApp, and the most common post-purchase question concerns delivery time. If the reply is slow, they check Reclame Aqui before asking again.
Watch the full video about The Billion-Dollar Battle for Brazil Between Mercado Livre and Shopee.
Pharmacies selling online: what Brazilian law and Anvisa currently allow
Online medicine sales in Brazil follow RDC 44/2009 issued by Anvisa, Brazil's health regulator. The resolution answers the question that appears on Google alongside the announcement: "Can I sell medicines online?" Yes, if you are a pharmacy or drugstore open to the public, with a pharmacist present throughout business hours (Article 52). The resolution requires the following at each stage:
| Requirement | What RDC 44/2009 says | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Who dispenses | Only pharmacies and drugstores open to the public, with a pharmacist throughout business hours | Article 52 |
| Prescription | A pharmacist must receive and evaluate the prescription for prescription medicine ordered remotely | Article 52, paragraph 1 |
| Special controls | Remote sale prohibited except where specific legislation permits it | Article 52, paragraph 2 |
| Website | The website address must be listed in the pharmacy license (AFE) | Article 55 |
| Transport | The pharmacy is responsible, including packaging temperature and humidity conditions | Article 56 |
| Delivery | A card with the pharmacist's name and the pharmacy's phone number and address accompanies the medicine | Article 58, paragraph 2 |
For specially controlled medicines, RDC 812/2023 permitted remote delivery under specific conditions: a pharmacist checks the prescription before delivery, the prescription notification is retained, and a record is available at the establishment, according to law firm Demarest's September 2023 interpretation.
The 2026 change is Law 15.357 of March 20, which added paragraph 6 to Article 6 of Law 5.991/1973: licensed and registered pharmacies and drugstores "may contract digital channels and ecommerce platforms for logistics and delivery to consumers, provided full compliance with applicable health regulations is ensured." The pharmacy remains responsible for dispensing; the platform handles logistics and delivery.
Because those regulations do not yet exist, on August 19, 2026 Anvisa approved the opening of a process to regulate pharmacy contracts with digital channels and platforms, with a public consultation planned and no completion date. Abrafarma told Exame it would question the agency about the legality of the announced sales, citing an August 10 Anvisa notice that revoking resolutions "does not automatically authorize the sale of pharmaceutical products."
For an independent pharmacy, the practical reading is that dispensing remains its responsibility, with a pharmacist and an evaluated prescription; third-party delivery depends on what Anvisa publishes. Follow the public consultation and keep the website address on the AFE.
How to meet a short deadline without your own fleet
A neighborhood store or independent pharmacy does not need a fleet to offer delivery within hours. It needs to choose a method it can sustain every day in each area and promise only that time frame. The table compares the current options.
| Method | Delivery time you can promise | What the store controls | What remains outside its control |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace with its own delivery (Envios Agora) | Up to 60 minutes in covered neighborhoods | Picking, packing and dispatch within 25 minutes | Seller selection, coverage area and buyer contact within the platform |
| Courier through a delivery app | Within the hour in the app's coverage area | When to call, what to pack and customer notification | Peak-time trip prices and unavailability in rain |
| Motorcycle courier or local same-day carrier | Same day, subject to a cutoff time | Dispatch window and route | Capacity at peak times and coverage outside the area |
| Store pickup | Ready in minutes, no shipping fee | Picking and the "ready for pickup" notice | Customer must travel to the store |
| Standard shipping with proactive updates | Two to five days, clearly stated at checkout | The promised deadline and updates at each stage | Speed itself |
The last row is the cheapest and most often overlooked. Even a store that cannot deliver in one hour can avoid silence: give an accurate deadline at checkout, confirm immediately and send an update at each status change. Some late-delivery complaints come from a checkout promise the route cannot meet, and that part can disappear without investment in logistics.
For pharmacies, the marketplace option still depends on the regulation described above. App couriers, the pharmacy's own motorcycle couriers and store pickup remain subject to RDC 44: transport remains the pharmacy's responsibility (Article 56), with the pharmacist's card in the package (Article 58).
The 25 minutes: what must be ready before accepting the order
The Envios Agora clock starts when the sale is confirmed. Twenty-five minutes include seeing the order, finding the item, packing it, printing the label and leaving the package at the pickup point. For a pharmacy, it includes the pharmacist checking the prescription. Before adopting the service or promising a similar deadline on its own site, a store needs to address:
- Stock by address. An item offered for express delivery must be at the pickup address, with a reliable count. Listing an item held in a warehouse in another neighborhood causes a missed deadline before the process begins.
- Alert the person picking the order. The sale notification must sound at the counter or in the stockroom rather than sit in an email someone reads hourly.
- Packaging ready for the size limits. Keep boxes within 50 cm per side and 100 cm combined, with tape and labels at the workstation. Medicine with temperature requirements needs thermal packaging according to its leaflet (RDC 44, Article 56).
- Print the label at the counter. Keep a printer on at the picking point. Fetching a label from another room costs five minutes you do not have.
- A rule for exceptions. If the item is unavailable or the prescription is rejected, cancel the order and notify the customer in the first few minutes, not at the end of the deadline.
- A defined cutoff time. Express delivery without staff to pick orders after 6 p.m. leads to delays. Publish the window when the promise applies.
These six points apply to Mercado Livre and to orders on your own site delivered through an app. The difference is customer contact: marketplace conversations happen inside the platform, while for your own store's orders you control WhatsApp and manage delivery expectations there.
WhatsApp confirmations and updates: a sequence by event
A customer wants to know about four stages of an express order without asking: payment confirmed, order picked, out for delivery and delivered. Each is an event recorded by the store's platform. When these events reach the support system, each status change can trigger a message, and a staff member only steps in when something unusual happens.
In ChatFunnel, the connection to the store's platform syncs order status to the CRM and automations react to those events: they send the message, wait, check a condition and move the customer to another funnel stage. Outside the 24-hour window since the customer's last message, an update uses a Meta-approved template that ChatFunnel registers and monitors. The information received varies by integration, so check which events your connection supplies before building the flow.
Hypothetical example: a supplement store in São Paulo offers app-based delivery within 90 minutes in neighboring areas:
| Platform event | WhatsApp message | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| Payment confirmed at 2:02 p.m. | "We received your order #2210. We are picking it and it will leave within 30 minutes. Estimated delivery: by 3:30 p.m." | Automation |
| "Picked" status at 2:15 p.m. | No message; the funnel stage changes to "awaiting pickup" | Automation |
| Exception: 2:45 p.m. with no "out for delivery" status | "Your order #2210 is ready and waiting for the courier. We have notified the team; if it goes past 3:30 p.m., you will receive a new estimate." The conversation and history go to a person. | Automation sends notice; person resolves |
| "Out for delivery" status at 2:52 p.m. | "Your order #2210 is out for delivery. Estimated arrival: by 3:30 p.m." | Automation |
| "Delivered" status at 3:20 p.m. | "Delivered. If you have any questions about the product, just reply here." | Automation |
The exception row is the one that prevents a complaint. A 30-minute wait after payment checks whether the status has changed; if not, the customer receives a new estimate before asking, and the team receives the conversation with the order, time and what has already been said. This follows the same principle as Pix payment reminders that stop when payment arrives: the message depends on the order's current status, never on a fixed time alone.
For "where is my order," the AI agent replies using the synced status and rules in the knowledge base: delivery windows by neighborhood, cutoff time and what happens in rain. When a question falls outside the knowledge base, the AI passes the conversation and context to a person. The criteria for transfer appear in when AI should hand support over to a person, and other uses are mapped in the guide to AI for ecommerce. Tracking directly with the carrier inside the conversation is not currently available; the AI reports the status sent by the store's platform.
For a pharmacy, the sequence gains a step before "picked": prescription validation. The confirmation can request a photo of the prescription if it was not included with the order, and the status advances only after the pharmacist approves. A rejected prescription triggers a specific message with the reason and guidance and goes to a person, because this concerns health and the rule comes from RDC 44.
How to tell whether the promised deadline is being met
Measure three figures every week, by area and delivery method:
- Time to dispatch: from payment confirmation to "out for delivery" status. For Envios Agora, the limit is 25 minutes; on your site, it is what you promised at checkout.
- Orders delivered within the estimate: as a percentage. Below 90%, the checkout promise needs to change before the route does.
- "Where is my order" questions per 100 orders: if the number rises, the status update is not reaching customers or the estimate is wrong.
The CRM report with stages and loss reasons, plus message history by contact, provides these figures for orders passing through ChatFunnel. A marketplace seller measures the first figure in Mercado Livre's dashboard and the other two only for orders from its own site. Compare the two channels month by month: if the store's site delivers more slowly and receives more questions, the issue is the update, the cheapest item on the list to fix.
Mercado Livre has raised delivery expectations, and support expectations have risen with them. Online sellers can address communication first: immediate confirmation, updates at every stage and a person ready for exceptions. Order status synced with the CRM, event-based automations and an AI agent using the store's knowledge base run this sequence on the store's WhatsApp.
