Nu Holdings Ltd. and Mercado Pago, two of Latin America’s largest fintech companies, temporarily suspended some cryptocurrency services on Friday, November 6.
Nubank halted cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals in Brazil after an unidentified external service provider responsible for verifying transactions experienced a failure. The company said the issue was unrelated to its own infrastructure and that customers’ assets and information remained secure. Other crypto-related products continued to operate normally, and buying and selling cryptocurrency in the app was unaffected.
Mercado Pago also halted transfers, citing “instabilities in the system,” and warned customers that deposits could be delayed.
The disruptions followed a disclosure earlier in the week by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, which Nubank uses to monitor transfers, that its platform had suffered a security breach. Neither Nubank nor Mercado Pago named the provider or linked the service suspensions to the Chainalysis incident.