Nubank, Mercado Pago Freeze Crypto Transfer Screening Rails

Nubank and Mercado Pago froze key cryptocurrency transfer paths on Friday, November 6, 2026, after failures involving external screening and data providers. Deposits and wallet movements stalled, although both companies kept in-app crypto buying and selling online, according to a Reuters report carried by Channel NewsAsia.

Brazilian digital bank Nubank told users that crypto withdrawals and deposits were temporarily unavailable because of “instability in an external data provider.” A statement carried by Exame and Veja said Nubank’s own systems were unaffected. The bank said customer assets and data remained protected, other crypto products continued working, and transfers would resume after the supplier restored service.

Mercado Pago, the payments arm of MercadoLibre, described an incident at a risk-monitoring and anti-money-laundering provider. It said crypto transfer operations were unstable, blocked some outbound transfers to external wallets as a protective step, and could delay incoming deposits. Delayed deposits would credit automatically once the service recovered, while virtual-asset buy and sell functions continued without impact.

What stayed online?

Nubank suspended direct crypto deposits and withdrawals through its app, but did not halt cryptoasset trading. Mercado Pago stopped part of the outbound flow to external wallets and warned that inbound deposits might lag. The platforms therefore separated access to market liquidity from access to self-custody or another trading venue.

Users could still exchange fiat for crypto inside either app. They could not, for the time being, move the same coins freely to a self-custody wallet or another platform. That distinction matters because a functioning trade screen does not establish that the compliance and data layer governing withdrawals can verify an address or release funds.

Why did screening sit on the critical path?

Retail crypto infrastructure uses two distinct paths. One prices and settles a buy or sell against the company’s own inventory or liquidity partners. A second decides whether to credit an incoming deposit or release funds to an external address once screening clears.

That second path depends on outside address-risk scores, sanctions and AML monitoring, and transaction-verification feeds. When those feeds fail, a regulated retail platform generally stops movement rather than leave a quote active without the required checks. Trading can remain available because it does not depend on the same external-wallet screening step.

Both companies said they were working with suppliers to restore transfers. For users, the operational effect was not a market-price interruption. It was a liquidity-access constraint: assets could remain at the fintech while transfers to self-custody or another venue waited for screening infrastructure to recover.

Protected custody did not mean immediate portability. A customer balance could remain available within the platform and still be inaccessible for a user seeking to move it elsewhere. The firms’ continued buy-and-sell functions demonstrated that their trading screens remained active, not that the external transfer layer had recovered.

Which providers were named?

Neither Nubank nor Mercado Pago named the external provider. Public statements also do not establish whether both companies suffered failures at the same vendor or encountered two parallel outages on November 6. The available information therefore does not support attributing the disruption to one shared counterparty.

Veja identified Fireblocks as Nubank’s stated crypto custodian and Paxos as Mercado Pago’s. Those appointments identify the asset custodians, not the failed screening hop. They do not show that either custody provider caused the transfer suspension.

The episode shows how two of Latin America’s largest retail crypto gateways still depend on third-party transfer-screening rails even when trading appears normal. External risk monitors and data vendors sit between a customer balance and the open network; when that layer goes dark, the firms’ protective response is to block the exit.

When do transfers resume?

Neither company published a restoration deadline or an estimate of how many transfers remained delayed. The immediate checkpoint is the unnamed suppliers’ return to service: transfers should resume only after screening feeds recover, while spot buy-and-sell functions remain available in the meantime.