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LATAM / Brazil · Updated 11 March 2026

Brazil's neobank index,
by BCB licence class.

Brazil is Latin America's largest fintech market and the only one with a fintech-by-default retail bank base. The protection question is simple: credit institutions (Nubank, Inter, C6) are FGC-covered to R$250,000; payment institutions (Mercado Pago) are not. Read the licence before the marketing.

4FGC-protected
~13%Top yield (Selic-linked CDB)
2013BCB regulated since (Nubank)
Last verified11 March 2026
01 — The licence taxonomy

Three BACEN classes,
two protection regimes.

Brazil's central-bank framework distinguishes between credit institutions (deposit-taking, FGC-eligible) and payment institutions (segregation-only). The licence class is the single most important fact about any "neobank" in BR.

Banco Múltiplo · Full bank
Banco InterFull bank
FGC memberR$250,000 / institution
BCB-supervisedFull disclosure regime
SCFI / Financeira · Credit institution
Nubank, C6SCFI / SCD
FGC memberR$250,000 / institution
BCB-supervisedSame prudential rulebook
IPMP · Instituição de Pagamento
Mercado PagoWallet
NOT FGCSegregation only
BACEN-supervisedPayments framework
Deposit protection LATAM-BR
Scheme
FGC
Ceiling
R$250,000
Regulator
Banco Central do Brasil (BCB)

Fundo Garantidor de Créditos (FGC) protects up to R$250,000 per depositor per institution, with a R$1M aggregate cap across all FGC-member institutions over a 4-year window. Cover applies to full credit institutions (bancos múltiplos, comerciais, etc.) only. Brazilian fintechs licensed as IPMP (Instituições de Pagamento) are NOT FGC members — customer funds are segregated but not insured.

Primary source: https://www.fgc.org.br/

03 — FGC vs CDB: the institutional ladder

R$ on screen is not always a deposit.

The Fundo Garantidor de Créditos covers eligible deposit products at FGC-member institutions up to R$250,000 per depositor per institution, with a R$1,000,000 four-year aggregate ceiling. Eligibility is product-level, not group-level — a CDB issued by Nubank or Inter is FGC-eligible; an idle balance in a conta de pagamento at an IPMP is not.

For a saver who cares about both yield and protection, the rational pattern is straightforward: hold the everyday balance in the conta digital for PIX and card spend, sweep savings into a CDB issued by an FGC-member institution. Most BR neobank apps surface a one-tap CDB allocation — Nubank's "RDB" sub-product, Inter's "CDB Inter", C6's "CDB C6". The headline yields are typically expressed as a percentage of the CDI rate (e.g. "100% CDI") and float with Selic.

The four-year aggregate cap is the non-obvious rule. If you have ever been compensated by FGC for a previous bank failure, the R$1M ceiling counts down for four years from that event. For most depositors this never binds; for high-balance savers spreading across multiple institutions, it does.

04 — PIX coverage

Universal across all BACEN-supervised entities.

PIX — Brazil's instant-payments rail launched by BACEN in 2020 — is mandatory for all BACEN-supervised institutions above a threshold size. Every entity in this ranking (Nubank, Inter, C6, Mercado Pago) is a PIX participant, so PIX availability does not differentiate. What does differentiate is QR-code presentation, Pix-Saque, and Pix-Troco UX — Inter has historically been the strongest on this dimension; Nubank ships the smoothest send/receive flow.

05 — Verdict

If FGC matters, pick a credit institution.

For an everyday Brazilian account where statutory protection is load-bearing, the answer is one of the three FGC-member options — Nubank, Inter, or C6. Nubank wins on UX and brand reach, Inter on product breadth (banking + investing + insurance + Inter Shop), C6 on the cross-currency Global Account and Átomos rewards. Mercado Pago is a strong everyday wallet for the MercadoLibre ecosystem but should not be confused with a deposit-insured account — for balances above R$50k or so, the IPMP licence class is a real consideration.