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By Bando
Bando is a treasury management platform for SMEs in emerging markets, starting in Mexico. We solve three critical problems for companies with $5-15M USD in revenue that are underserved by traditional banking:
1. Instant-liquidity government bonds (CETES) Mexican government bonds have outperformed both USD and T-bills over 15, 10, and 5-year periods. Yet ~90% of corporate treasuries in this segment generate zero yield because existing options require locking capital for 7+ days or settling for low overnight rates. By integrating Etherfuse on Stellar, Bando offers competitive-yield CETES with 24/7 instant liquidity, a product that didn't exist before tokenization.
2. Cross-border FX operations The US-Mexico corridor is a $1 trillion annual B2B payment market. Our target companies juggle 2-5 banking relationships and pay over 150 bps per transaction. Bando executes FX operations at transparent rates with near-instant settlement.
3. Treasury reconciliation tools CFOs in our segment still manage treasury through Excel spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads; not by choice, but because banks lack the technology for self-service. Bando provides a modern dashboard for transaction management, reconciliation, and reporting.
This SCF grant focuses specifically on integrating Etherfuse's tokenized CETES infrastructure on the Stellar network, making Stellar a core chain for real-world asset treasury management in Latin America.
$75.0K
First B2B client transacting on the platform with forecasted volumes of $200K USD/month
Second client in final KYB step with forecasted volumes of $500K USD/month
KYB onboarding completes in 5 days (vs. 2-5 weeks industry standard in Mexico)
Signed LOI with Felix Pago, forecasted volume $100K USD/week
3 additional startups in LOI pipeline
Active distribution experiment with ex-director at Vector (sanctioned Oct 2025) who has portfolio of 40 target companies
Milestone 1: Etherfuse CETES Integration
Brief description:
Integrate Etherfuse's Assets API and Quotes API into Bando's backend, enabling the platform to fetch available CETES Stablebond products on Stellar, retrieve real-time pricing and yield data, and present quote information to business clients through our treasury dashboard.
Main elements built:
Integration to Etherfuse's API to mint and burn CETES. This integration touches several Etherfuse's APls: Assets,
quotes, orders, crypto wallets, and more.
How to measure completion:
Bando's backend successfully calls Etherfuse Assets API to list available Stablebond products and Quotes API to retrieve a valid price quote for a CETES purchase. API responses are logged, and a test quote is displayed in the Bando staging dashboard.
Budget breakdown:
$25,000 Investment in technical and product team doing the integration.
Milestone 2: First 2 B2B Clients Live
Brief description:
Implement the full buy/sell flow for CETES Stablebonds using Etherfuse's Orders API. This enables Bando clients to mint (purchase) tokenized CETES and burn (redeem) them back to MXN, with transactions settling on the Stellar network.
Main elements built:
Integration with Etherfuse's KYB process (onboarding, bank accounts, crypto wallets, and more APIs), enabling MPC wallets for our clients, enhancement of treasury management portal.
How to measure completion:
A published Stellar transaction link showing a successful mint (CETES purchase) and a separate transaction link showing a successful burn (CETES redemption) executed through Bando's platform on Stellar testnet.
Budget breakdown: $20,000 Investment in product and engineering teams to launch the API integrations mentioned above.
Milestone 3: $1M Cumulative Volume
Brief description:
Demonstrate product-market fit and infrastructure reliability by scaling Bando's Stellar transaction volume to $1M USD cumulative across all active clients. This volume target validates that the full Etherfuse-Stellar integration (CETES Stablebonds and FX operations) can handle real commercial treasury flows at scale.
Main elements built: enablement of multi tenancy accounts for our clients, child organizations APIs. In milestone 3 we'll implement Etherfuse FX product, specifically their APIs on swaps, orders, assets, and webhooks.
How to measure completion: Public Dune Analytics dashboard showing cumulative transaction volume exceeding $1M USD across all Bando transactions on Stellar. Dashboard includes breakdown by transaction type (CETES mint/burn, FX swaps).
Budget breakdown:
$15,000 in engineering and product expense for multi tenancy accounts and child organizations.
$15,000 implementing Etherfuse FX. This is a whole new product stream, we need engineering power to implement Etherfuse FX product.
Proof of completion criteria: Dune dashboard with the total transactions that were executed though Bando.
Bando is built by two repeat operators with 10+ years each at the frontier of crypto and fintech in LATAM. We previously built together at Bitso (Mexico's leading crypto exchange) and have the technical depth, distribution, and industry relationships to execute. Ab also founded Espacio Cripto, the largest crypto media company in LATAM.
Abraham Cobos. Co-founder & CEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/abrahamcobos/
As Head of Crypto at Bitso (2020–2023), Abraham scaled the asset offering from 10 to 70 tokens (including listing XLM), started Bitso's MXN stablecoin, and led the wallet infrastructure migration from BitGo to Fireblocks. Outside Bitso, he co-founded Espacio Cripto, the largest Spanish-language crypto media platform in LATAM, with 500+ episodes and a 12,000+ member community. Abraham is now fully focused on growing Bando.
Luis Gabriel. Co-founder & CTO https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-gabriel-bb154691/
Luis brings 13+ years of financial infrastructure engineering at scale. At Bitso, he was a Platform Engineer and the Engineering Lead for the stablecoin initiative and architected the smart contract infrastructure behind the exchange's multichain deposit system, keeping it live and performant for millions of users during peak volatility. Before Bitso, he was Engineering Lead at Clip (LATAM's leading payments unicorn) and a full-stack engineer at BBVA. He has also authored the implementation proposal for Celo's BRL stablecoin, reflecting his depth in the Web3 ecosystem.
Julian
Guayabas
Ab Cobos
No other submissions.