Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the dLocal fourth quarter 2024 results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to dLocal. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the fourth quarter 2024 earnings call today. If you have not seen the earnings release, a copy is posted in the financials section of the Investor Relations website. On the call today, you have Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, Mark Ortiz, Chief Financial Officer, and Mirele de Aragao, Head of Investor Relations. A slide presentation has been provided to accompany the prepared remarks. This event is being broadcast live via webcast, and both the webcast and presentation may be accessed through dLocal's website at investor.dlocal.com. The recordings will be available shortly after the event is concluded. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements included in the presentation or mentioned in this conference call are based on currently available information and dLocal's current assumptions, expectations, and projections about future events.
While the company believes that our assumptions, expectations, and projections are reasonable given currently available information, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on those forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those included in dLocal's presentation or discussed in this conference call for a variety of reasons, including those described in the forward-looking statements and risk factors section of dLocal's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on dLocal's Investor Relations website. I will now turn the conference call over to dLocal. Thank you.
At dLocal, we're unlocking the power of emerging markets, enabling businesses to transact and thrive where immense growth potential is just beginning to unfold. The year 2024 has been a testament to the strength and resilience of our business model. We experienced remarkable growth. Our TPV increased by 45% year over year, reaching a record of $26 billion. This achievement was driven by strong performance across diverse verticals, countries, and products, demonstrating the increased diversification of our business. Besides the remarkable volume growth, we also delivered a gross profit of $295 million and adjusted EBITDA of $189 million. Despite ongoing investments to support the growth opportunities, our adjusted EBITDA over gross profit margin remained at a solid level of 64%. These numbers are all a testament to the strength of our financial model, delivering a rare combination of growth and high margin profitability.
As we lay the foundations for scalable and profitable growth over the coming years, our investments over the past year have focused on several key initiatives. These accomplishments would not be possible without our dedicated team, whose local expertise and presence in emerging markets have become essential to our merchants. In 2024, we welcomed 194 new talents, expanding to 1,095 team members across 49 countries. A substantial part of this increase came from our technology and product team, who work intensively to innovate our product portfolio, develop new features to enhance performance for our merchants, and expand payment methods, all while prioritizing cost and operational efficiency, both in terms of cost and OPEX. During 2024, we launched 20 new payment methods for pay-ins and 7 for payouts, while adding close to 100 new partner integrations to ensure redundancy, cost efficiency, and unlocking the latest and greatest payment features.
We launched and ramped up our new payment orchestration solution for merchants with a fully localized operation. We continue to seek ways to increase transaction approval rates and reduce processing costs. First, we enabled network tokenization with 7 processors across 10 countries. Second, we launched and further improved our Smart Request functionality, a new AI engine to dynamically adapt the card authorization message to acquirers in order to improve conversion rates. And finally, we developed our new cost optimization engine for our Smart Router, which has decreased our processing costs while maximizing approval rates. We also worked closely together to enhance our customer experience, reducing our customer support response time by 88% within 9 months and decreasing issue resolution time by 45% through AI implementation.
Moreover, our suite of products continues to be overhauled from the ground up, enabling an extensive list of use cases and setups, and we continue to improve our merchant dashboard user experience. The combined efforts across our different teams are reflected in our competitive pricing, optimized conversion rates, and customer experience. As a result, we strengthened the relationships with our existing merchants, achieving a TPV retention rate of over 140% in 2024. We expanded our reach by onboarding new merchants to our platform, with the 2024 cohort achieving record level of first-year TPV, and we increased our NPS by 8 points compared to the first half of 2024, reaching high levels within the industry. All this has allowed us to close out the year serving more than 700 merchants across more than 40 markets.
As we continue to execute our disciplined approach to expense management, we have delivered considerable efficiencies by a methodic approach to renegotiating with processors and brokers on cost, enhancing hedging strategies to minimize currency losses and reduce costs, and optimizing structures and flows for tax efficiencies. We have also secured nine new licenses globally, enabling us to expand product offerings, access new growth opportunities, and connect merchants with emerging markets. As we look back on 2024, we are proud of what we have accomplished. These results highlight our ability to adapt and thrive in a dynamic market, thanks to our team's dedication to commercial efforts, technological innovation, and execution capabilities.
In 2025, we remain committed to delivering sustained growth and value to our stakeholders as we continue to explore the growing total addressable market of cross-border payments driven by shifts towards payment digitalization, the growing importance of emerging and frontier markets, and the surging demand for cross-border and instant payment methods. dLocal: Unlocking the Power of Emerging Markets.