Nubank restored cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals on the evening of Friday (6) after an outage caused by failures at an external data provider. Mercado Pago, the financial services arm of Mercado Livre, also suspended transfers the same day but had not publicly confirmed a full return to normal service as of the latest update on Saturday (7).
The two platforms are among the largest fintechs in Latin America and communicated the block through notices displayed in their own apps. In Nubank's case, the message said that "cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals are temporarily unavailable" and that its team was working to restore the feature as quickly as possible. The company said the instability did not originate in its own infrastructure and that customer assets and data remained protected, with its other crypto products operating normally.
Mercado Pago described a more specific problem involving the vendor responsible for monitoring transaction risks and preventing money laundering. As a precaution, the company temporarily blocked transfers to external wallets. Incoming deposits could also face delays, with pending amounts to be credited automatically once the affected systems were restored.
Neither company publicly identified the service provider involved, and there is no confirmation that both failures came from the same company. Nubank and Mercado Pago have both previously worked with Paxos on cryptocurrency infrastructure, but that history does not establish that Paxos caused either incident.
The episode highlights digital platforms' reliance on third parties for functions such as transaction screening, compliance monitoring and custody. When a critical service becomes unavailable, an institution may restrict transfers until it can verify operations securely, even if blockchain networks continue processing transactions normally.
The disruption comes in a turbulent week for digital asset infrastructure in the region. On November 2, Brazilian exchange Mercado Bitcoin reported a security incident and said it had frozen US$11.2 million in assets, with no harm to customers or data leakage. The company suspended deposits and withdrawals as a precaution.
Shortly before that, Binance had suffered a US$6.3 billion attack attributed to North Korea, which denies involvement. The exchange, considered the world's largest, suspended withdrawals and resumed operations gradually from November 1, pledging to cover customer losses with its own funds and an emergency fund.
MercadoLibre itself had already flagged the risk in its 2025 annual filing, noting that disruptions at external cryptocurrency service providers could prevent customers from accessing trading, custody or transfer functions. This week's case shows that scenario is no longer hypothetical: two of the region's largest fintechs had to restrict operations at the same time, albeit possibly for different reasons.
For the industry, the episode reinforces scrutiny of the concentration of infrastructure and compliance vendors in the crypto market. The failure to identify the providers involved limits investors' and regulators' ability to assess the extent of the problem and the possibility of further disruptions. Contacted for comment, the companies did not detail timelines for fully normalizing their services.
