Two of Latin America’s biggest fintechs hit pause on crypto today. Nubank suspended crypto deposits and withdrawals, and Mercado Pago blocked part of its transfers to external wallets. Both blamed an outside provider. Both said user assets are safe.
Here is the short version. Nubank and Mercado Pago suspended crypto transfers on November 6, 2026 after a third-party vendor failed. Buying and selling inside the apps still works. Moving coins in or out does not. Nobody has said when it comes back.
I live in Mexico, where Mercado Pago is everywhere, and the outage reached here too. On paper this is a minor glitch. In practice it exposes something most users never think about. Between your bank app and the blockchain sits a chain of vendors you have never heard of, and any one of them can stop your money.
What Nubank and Mercado Pago Said
Nubank went first. Its statement said deposits and withdrawals on NuCripto are temporarily unavailable because of instability at an external data provider. The bank stressed that the problem is not inside its own infrastructure and that all customer assets and information remain protected. Trading and other crypto products keep running.
Mercado Pago showed users an in-app notice that crypto transfers are not possible due to system instability. In a statement to Reuters, it pointed to an incident at a provider of risk monitoring and anti-money laundering services. Some transfers to external wallets are blocked as a precaution. Deposits may arrive late, and pending amounts will credit automatically once the service returns.
The hit is not limited to Brazil. Mercado Pago confirmed that its operations in Chile and Mexico are affected as well. Neither company named the vendor, and it is not confirmed whether both rely on the same one.
As a preventive step, Mercado Bitcoin also paused deposits and withdrawals on Friday. That exchange is still recovering from its own breach, which we covered in our Mercado Bitcoin hack post. For Brazilian users, three of the biggest crypto rails went quiet on the same day.
Is Chainalysis the Missing Link?
Here is the part nobody has confirmed. Chainalysis, the blockchain analytics firm that sells transaction monitoring to banks and exchanges, has been fighting a breach since late October. On November 4 it took its KYT compliance tool, address screening and login portal offline after finding abnormal activity. A day later it admitted that names, password hashes and live tokens for all users were exposed.
Mercado Pago described its failed vendor as a provider of risk monitoring and anti-money laundering services. That is exactly what Chainalysis KYT does. Brazilian outlets have drawn the same line, and the timing fits. Still, neither Nubank nor Mercado Pago has said the word Chainalysis, so treat the connection as plausible rather than proven.
If it is true, the lesson is bigger than one outage. A single compliance vendor going dark can freeze crypto movement at banks across an entire continent at once. Chainalysis also stated that its incident is unrelated to the Binance theft, which we are still tracking in our Binance hack post mortem.
The Middleman You Never Signed Up With
Your bank app does not talk to the blockchain by itself. It rents custody, screening and monitoring from outside firms. This week showed three ways that stack can break.
On Monday, Paraguay’s biggest digital bank failed and froze about three million accounts overnight. I wrote about it in the Ueno Bank collapse post. Nobody hacked anything. The bank simply ran out of capital, and the regulator pulled the plug.
On Friday morning, the US Treasury cut MEXC off from the American financial system. Our MEXC FinCEN order explainer covers the $16 billion in alleged illicit flows. Again, no hack. A compliance failure was enough.
By Friday afternoon, two fintechs with tens of millions of users could not move crypto because a vendor went down. No hack of the banks, no insolvency, no sanctions. Just a dependency nobody thought about.
Crypto inside a bank app inherits every dependency the bank has. The bank can fail, as Ueno did. The regulator can cut it off, as Treasury did with MEXC. Or a vendor three layers down can go dark, as happened today. You never agreed to any of those parties, and you cannot see them. The convenience is one app. The cost is that strangers you cannot name decide when you can withdraw.
My own rule is boring. Trade on an exchange, store in a wallet I control, and never let an exchange balance grow past what I am actively using. We break down the trade-offs in our self custody or exchange guide.
What to Do If Your Coins Are Stuck
If you are a Nubank or Mercado Pago user, here is the practical side.
Do not panic sell. Trading still works inside both apps, and the pause is on transfers, not on balances. Selling into a panic locks in a loss for no reason.
Wait for the all-clear before moving everything. Mercado Pago said pending transfers credit automatically. Resending the same transaction twice is how people lose coins in a backlog.
Then set up a real exit. Open an account on a global exchange that serves your country, and get a self custody wallet. Our guide to the best crypto exchanges in Latin America ranks the venues with local payment rails across the region. Brazilians should start with the best crypto exchanges in Brazil instead, since PIX support changes the list.
If you are in Paraguay, this week was rough on both fronts. Our how to buy bitcoin in Paraguay guide walks through P2P and cash routes that work without a bank.
For the basics of keeping funds safe, start with our airdrop safety page.
Keep This Content Free
Fintech apps are easy, until the day they are not. If you are opening a proper exchange account after today, our links pay the site a small commission at no cost to you. Sign up to OKX with our bonus or join Bybit through AirdropAlert, both with Latin American payment rails. It keeps us publishing warnings like this one within hours.
Final Words
Nubank and Mercado Pago will restore crypto transfers, probably within days. Both are solvent, and both said the right things. The outage itself is minor.
The pattern around it is not. In one week, a bank failed, an exchange got blacklisted, and two fintechs lost a vendor. Users had no say in any of it, and in today’s case they could not even see who failed. Crypto was built to cut out the middleman. A bank app puts several back in. Use these apps to buy if they are convenient, then move coins to a wallet you control while that option still exists.
We will update this post when transfers resume or when the vendor is confirmed.
FAQ
Why did Nubank suspend crypto transfers?
Nubank said an external data provider became unstable, which forced it to pause crypto deposits and withdrawals on November 6, 2026. It stated the issue is not in its own systems and that all assets are safe.
Why did Mercado Pago block crypto transfers?
Mercado Pago cited an incident at a vendor that handles risk monitoring and anti-money laundering checks. It blocked some transfers to external wallets as a precaution in Brazil, Chile and Mexico.
Are funds on Nubank and Mercado Pago safe?
Both companies say yes. Balances are intact, trading works, and only transfers in and out are paused. No hack of either platform has been reported.
Is the Chainalysis breach behind the outage?
Unconfirmed. Chainalysis took its compliance monitoring tools offline this week after a breach, and Mercado Pago’s description of its vendor matches that service. Neither fintech has named the provider.
Can I still buy crypto on Nubank and Mercado Pago?
Yes. Buying and selling inside the apps continues. You just cannot withdraw coins to an external wallet or deposit from one until the pause ends.
Should I keep crypto in a bank app?
Small amounts for convenience are fine. For savings, a self custody wallet removes the vendor, bank and regulatory layers that this week put on display.
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