Bloquo seeds Brazilian bank stablecoin settlement
Bloquo seeds Brazilian bank stablecoin settlement with a round above R$20 million, about $3.7 million, co-led by Crescera and Triaxis. The filing is still open.
Having watched sponsor banks rent a charter to card programs, I read this Bloquo round as that rental pointed at Brazilian bank stablecoin settlement. Valor Econômico reported on October 30, 2026 that the company closed a seed of more than R$20 million, co-led by Crescera Capital and Triaxis Capital, with Lattice Capital and other investors participating. A November 4 post from the company put that sum at about $3.7 million. Valor's company figures sit well above the round: 125 active institutional clients and $2 billion of annualized volume, with the capital assigned to regulatory capital, licenses, product, hiring and expansion.
A volume number and a settlement stack are different assets. Carlos Russo, chief executive at Bloquo, told Valor the plan is to process more flow on the firm's own platform and Application Programming Interface (API), and to lean less on intermediaries. Bank teams know the shape from lenders buying Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) capacity instead of a charter, the pattern in Synctera's latest raise as banks return to BaaS. The permission on offer is a virtual-asset authorization, so Brazilian bank stablecoin settlement is usable for a customer only after that permission exists.
A filing, three products, and a crowded queue
Valor listed five uses for the money: regulatory capital for the Brazilian operation, authorizations and licenses, product and technology, hiring, and commercial expansion. The company said it will push three lines over the coming months, stablecoin liquidity, orchestration of international payments, and a virtual asset service provider (VASP) service so banks, brokers, payment firms, exchanges and wallets can offer stablecoins on Bloquo's infrastructure. Its site says clients buy and sell USDC and USDT against local currency, connect by API or dashboard, and can give each end client an account with a Pix key, across more than 30 currencies and more than 100 countries. Those reach figures are the company's, while the shift onto its own pipes is still a plan.
"Nosso diferencial é conectar o mundo bancário e o mundo das stablecoins em uma única infraestrutura," Carlos Russo, chief executive at Bloquo, told Valor Econômico. The next sentence in that interview says a client would otherwise assemble liquidity, foreign exchange, payments, compliance and technology separately, and that Bloquo puts those layers on one platform. Valor called the round the first institutional venture investment, after a 2025 pre-seed from angel investors. The same report said the founders were co-founders and executives at Transfero until 2023 and helped create BRZ, which it called the first Brazilian stablecoin, and that the firm is registered in the United States as a money services business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
The authorization behind the VASP service is still a request. Portal do Bitcoin reported on October 28, 2026 that Bloquo filed on October 26 to operate as a virtual-asset broker, covering intermediation and custody, in the same week as Avenia, Liqi, Nonco and Lumx. Estadão, citing Broadcast on October 31, put Itaú, Bradesco and Nubank among institutions that had filed or said they would, so the buyers Bloquo wants are also applicants. A bank with its own permission has less reason to rent one. Yellow Card took another route by buying GoMoney for Pix collections settled in stablecoins, acquiring a local provider rather than seeding a broker seat. Resolution BCB 519 takes effect on February 2, 2026 and governs authorization of these firms. Counsel at Souto Correa read the companion rules as giving firms already operating 270 days from that date to apply, and as barring authorized institutions from October 30, 2026 from intermediating for providers that lack authorization and sit outside an authorization process.
Domestic rails are a separate project. The European Central Bank and Brazil are studying a link between TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) and Pix, which would move retail money between accounts central banks already run. Yuno's Series B added stablecoin rails to payment orchestration, a processor choosing a rail per payment while someone else holds the license. Bloquo is selling that license question to banks and corporates.
What happens next follows from the filing, and the size of the round is the smaller variable. If phase one of the Central Bank review accepts Bloquo as a broker, the VASP service becomes a bookable counterparty for a bank treasury, and the five uses of the seed line up behind a permission the customer can name. If the review runs long, commercial expansion spends ahead of the authorization, and the $2 billion of company-reported volume stays partly on the intermediary pipes Russo says the round is meant to replace. That spread, between a settlement business and a distribution business, is what Brazilian bank stablecoin settlement still has to clear.
Reporting by Rick Steves. Filed 10 November 2026, 18:35 GMT.
Senior Reporter, Regulation and Fintech
Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011.
