The Latin American fintech landscape has witnessed another significant consolidation as Kuady, the Isle of Man-regulated digital wallet that once promised to revolutionize financial inclusion across South America, has quietly ceased operations. The platform's website and mobile applications went offline in early February 2025, with the last archived snapshot of the website captured on February 6, 2025.
For those unfamiliar with the platform, Kuady represented an ambitious attempt to replicate the European digital wallet success story in underbanked Latin American markets. What makes this closure particularly noteworthy is the subsequent career trajectory of its CEO and the broader consolidation trends reshaping the region's crypto-fintech ecosystem.
The Rise of Kuady: Ambitious Goals Meet Latin American Reality
Launched by Open Payment Technologies Ltd, Kuady operated under an Electronic Money Transmission Services license granted by the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority. The platform positioned itself with a community-focused mission — its name derived from the Spanish word "cuadrilla," meaning a group of people, reflecting the sense of community the company aimed to build.
Under the leadership of Lorenzo Pellegrino, a fintech veteran with previous experience as CEO of Skrill and NETELLER, Kuady expanded rapidly across multiple Latin American markets. The platform was live in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador, offering a range of services including virtual and physical Mastercard prepaid cards, money transfers, multi-currency accounts, and bill payment capabilities.
The digital wallet was powered by Mambu's cloud banking platform and backed by Microsoft Azure, allowing the company to launch in these markets in less than nine months from the start of its partnership. This rapid deployment reflected both the technical capabilities behind the platform and the urgent need for digital financial services in these markets.
The Value Proposition: Financial Inclusion in Challenging Markets
Kuady's target markets were characterized by high levels of financial exclusion, currency volatility, and limited access to traditional banking infrastructure. In Argentina particularly, where inflation and currency devaluation created urgent demand for alternative financial solutions, digital wallets like Kuady offered consumers ways to protect their savings by converting pesos into stablecoins or US dollars.
The platform offered several key features that addressed local market needs:
Multi-currency functionality: Users could hold balances in both USD and local currencies, providing a hedge against currency devaluation — a critical feature in markets like Argentina where the peso has experienced significant volatility.
Low-cost remittances: Free transfers in the same currency made it easier for families to send money across borders or between cities without incurring traditional banking fees.
Payment flexibility: Both virtual and physical Mastercard cards enabled users to spend their digital balances anywhere Mastercard was accepted, bridging the gap between digital wallets and everyday commerce.
Merchant services: Beyond consumer banking, Kuady offered payment processing services for merchants, helping businesses accept digital payments and expand into new markets.
The Competitive Landscape: Crowded and Consolidating
Kuady entered markets that were already becoming increasingly competitive. In Argentina alone, major players like Mercado Pago, Ualá, Naranja X, and MODO dominated the digital wallet space, each with millions of active users. Mercado Pago and Ualá both reported 6 million active users as of September 2022, while newer entrants like BNA+ and MODO had 8 and 9 million users respectively.
Brazil, another target market for Kuady's expansion plans, was even more crowded, with Nubank leading the charge alongside Neon, and numerous niche players targeting specific demographics. The region's largest markets had already seen significant consolidation, with incumbents launching their own digital banking offerings to compete with challengers.
In this environment, newer entrants like Kuady faced significant challenges:
Customer acquisition costs: With established players already commanding large user bases and brand recognition, acquiring customers required substantial marketing investment.
Regulatory complexity: Each market had different regulatory requirements, making multi-country expansion operationally complex and expensive.
Economic headwinds: Macroeconomic instability, particularly in Argentina, made it difficult for fintech companies to achieve profitability while keeping services affordable for users.
Funding constraints: Smaller home markets made it challenging to attract the level of investment needed for long-term sustainability and regional expansion.
The Silent Shutdown: February 2025
Unlike some fintech failures that make headlines, Kuady's closure appeared to be relatively quiet. The website and mobile applications went offline in early February 2025, with the last archived snapshot of www.kuady.com captured on February 6, 2025. There were no public announcements, press releases, or official communications about the shutdown that have been widely reported in fintech media.
This silent wind-down raises questions about what happened to user funds, whether customers were given adequate notice, and how the migration or withdrawal process was handled. The lack of public information is concerning from a consumer protection standpoint, though it's possible that direct communications were sent to users that haven't been made public.
The Nexo Connection: A Strategic Consolidation Story
The story takes an interesting turn when examining the subsequent career move of Lorenzo Pellegrino. In July 2025, just five months after Kuady's apparent shutdown, Pellegrino was appointed as Chief Banking Officer at Nexo, one of the world's leading digital asset platforms.
This appointment was not a minor role. As CBO, Pellegrino was tasked with overseeing the expansion of Nexo's core banking infrastructure, including global account operations, cross-border settlements, and the rollout of the Nexo Card — a dual-mode payment card designed to allow users to spend their digital asset holdings in everyday transactions.
Given Pellegrino's deep experience in digital wallets and payment systems, and his specific focus on Latin American markets at Kuady, this move to Nexo appears to be more than coincidental. It suggests a strategic alignment between the operational expertise developed at Kuady and Nexo's expansion ambitions.
Nexo's Latin American Strategy: The Buenbit Acquisition
The strategic picture became even clearer in December 2025, when Nexo announced the acquisition of Buenbit, one of Latin America's most trusted and fastest-growing crypto platforms. This acquisition gave Nexo a CNV-registered (Argentina's securities regulator) Virtual Asset Service Provider, establishing Buenos Aires as Nexo's Latin American hub for future partnerships and investments across Argentina, Peru, and Mexico.
The parallels between Kuady's former markets and Nexo's expansion strategy are striking:
Geographic overlap: Kuady operated in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador. Nexo's Buenbit acquisition targets Argentina, Peru, and Mexico — significant market overlap.
Product alignment: Kuady's vision of combining digital wallets with multi-currency accounts and payment cards aligns closely with Nexo's offering of digital asset accounts, crypto-backed credit, and the Nexo Card.
Leadership continuity: Lorenzo Pellegrino, who led Kuady's Latin American expansion, is now responsible for deploying Nexo's global banking infrastructure, including in Latin America.
Regulatory expertise: Buenbit's CNV registration provides the regulatory foundation that standalone operations like Kuady would have needed to obtain independently — an expensive and time-consuming process.
What This Means for Latin American Fintech
The Kuady shutdown and subsequent consolidation into the Nexo ecosystem reflects several important trends in the Latin American fintech landscape:
Scale matters: In competitive markets with high customer acquisition costs, platforms need either significant venture capital backing or a profitable business model from day one. Mid-sized players struggle to compete against both well-funded challengers and established incumbents.
Regulatory complexity drives consolidation: Operating across multiple Latin American jurisdictions requires navigating different regulatory frameworks. Acquiring established, licensed entities (like Nexo did with Buenbit) is often more efficient than building from scratch.
Crypto integration is accelerating: The move from pure payment wallets to platforms that integrate cryptocurrency services reflects evolving user preferences, particularly in markets experiencing currency instability.
Talent follows opportunity: The migration of experienced fintech operators like Pellegrino from standalone ventures to larger platforms with global reach suggests that consolidation will continue as executives seek the resources and scale needed to realize their strategic visions.
The "super-app" model prevails: Platforms that can offer comprehensive financial services — savings, payments, credit, investments — are better positioned than single-function apps in the fight for customer attention and wallet share.
Lessons for Fintech Entrepreneurs
The Kuady story offers several lessons for fintech entrepreneurs eyeing Latin American markets:
Market timing is critical: Entering an already crowded market requires either a unique differentiator or overwhelming capital to fight an expensive customer acquisition battle.
Regulatory strategy is strategic: Building a sustainable multi-country operation requires careful planning around licensing, compliance, and local partnerships. The regulatory burden should not be underestimated.
Economic volatility cuts both ways: While currency instability creates demand for alternative financial services, it also makes it harder to build predictable revenue models and retain customers who may need to liquidate holdings during crises.
Consider strategic alternatives: For founders and investors, an acquisition by or merger with a larger platform may create more value than trying to achieve standalone profitability, particularly when facing strong headwinds.
Customer communication matters: However the Kuady shutdown was handled, the lack of public information creates reputational risks for the broader ecosystem and regulatory scrutiny that could impact future ventures.
The Future of Digital Wallets in Latin America
Despite individual platform closures, the broader trend toward digital financial services in Latin America remains strong. Financial inclusion rates are rising, particularly in Brazil (96%) and Argentina (95%), driven largely by digital accounts and neobanks.
The market is evolving from a proliferation of standalone players to a more consolidated landscape where a few major platforms dominate each market segment. This consolidation is healthy in many respects — it allows the winners to invest in better security, regulatory compliance, and product development while reducing confusion for consumers.
Nexo's entry into the market through the Buenbit acquisition, combined with the expertise of veterans like Lorenzo Pellegrino, suggests that the next phase of Latin American fintech will be characterized by global platforms adapting their offerings to local needs, rather than purely local players trying to scale regionally.
Conclusion: From Kuady to Nexo — A Chapter Closes, Another Opens
The closure of Kuady marks the end of one chapter in Latin American digital banking, but the expertise, technology, and market understanding developed there appear to have found new life within Nexo's global platform. Rather than viewing this as a simple failure, it's perhaps more accurate to see it as a strategic consolidation — the kind that becomes inevitable as fintech markets mature and the gap between well-capitalized leaders and under-resourced challengers widens.
For consumers who used Kuady, the closure is a reminder of the importance of platform stability and the risks inherent in entrusting funds to newer fintech providers. For the industry, it reinforces the reality that in competitive markets with complex regulations, many promising ventures will ultimately be absorbed into larger ecosystems rather than achieving standalone success.
The question now is whether Nexo, armed with Buenbit's local presence and Pellegrino's operational expertise, can succeed where Kuady struggled — delivering sustainable, compliant, and user-friendly financial services to Latin America's underbanked populations. If the pattern holds, we may see other standalone digital wallet providers in the region face similar fates, either shutting down quietly or being absorbed by larger platforms with deeper pockets and global reach.