Bando

Bando (bando.cool) is a treasury management platform for Mexican companies. Businesses deposit pesos and hold that cash in tokenized CETES, which are Mexican government bonds, or in digital dollars. This is a new product. Until 2026, Bando was a crypto spending protocol that let wallet users buy gift cards, mobile top-ups and bill payments with their tokens. The team moved to the treasury product in March 2026. Its documentation says the spending protocol has been "in process of deprecation" since July 2026. As of October 2026, we found no Bando product that runs on Solana. This page covers both the current treasury product and the old spending app that many searches for "Bando crypto" still mean.

This Bando is not Band Protocol (BAND), the oracle network, and not any of the meme tokens with similar names.

What is Bando Treasury?

Bando Treasury is a dashboard where a Mexican company can earn yield on spare cash. The homepage lists three jobs:

• Earn: buy and sell CETES with 28, 91 and 182-day terms. You can also hold USD-denominated "digital dollars".
• Optimise: swap between CETES and digital dollars to manage yield, peso-dollar (FX) risk and liquidity.
• Deploy: send money abroad. A China corridor is listed as "coming soon". It would give a company a local CNAPS account in China, plus ways to pay suppliers through CNAPS or Alipay.

The site pitches it to finance teams, startups with cash in the bank, importers and exporters, and holding companies that run several firms.

How does Bando work for buying CETES?

A company deposits pesos through SPEI, Mexico's interbank transfer system. That deposit buys tokenized CETES. In a May 2026 post, Bando said the tokens yield "roughly 6% APY" and arrive the same day the deposit clears. Bando does not issue the bonds. According to the Stellar Community Fund project page, it uses Etherfuse CETES$0.067+0.1% Stablebonds on the Stellar network. Bando's newsletter describes Etherfuse as taking "physical CETES" and issuing tokens "backed 1:1 by actual government securities" (February 2026).

Bando's pitch is speed. Opening a CETES position through a traditional broker can take two to four weeks of paperwork, according to Bando's March 2026 pivot post. That post says the platform runs on tokenized assets, "programmatic MPC wallets" and stablecoin rails. MPC wallets split control of a wallet's key between several parties, so no single party holds it whole.

Why did Bando pivot from crypto spending to CETES?

In the March 2026 post, the team said it saw more friction in Mexican corporate treasury than in consumer crypto spending. Mexican companies hold about $195 billion in bank deposits, the post says, and getting into CETES means slow processes and several brokerage relationships. The team said it designed and launched the platform in three weeks. It also said it had signed its first paying client and letters of intent with "a Series B stablecoin startup and Mexico's largest cash payments operator". Neither partner is named, and we could not confirm either one independently.

The Stellar Community Fund awarded Bando $75,000 in its End-User Application category to build the treasury product. The fund's page lists a team of three.

What was the Bando spending protocol?

Bando started as an on-chain spending protocol. The docs repository describes it as a way for Web3 users to buy "prepaid codes, airtime top-ups, bill payments, in-game items, digital goods" through smart contracts that send each purchase request to a verified "fulfiller". The fulfiller then completes the order off-chain. Developers could add it to their apps through a white-label widget, a Spending API and a Fulfiller API. The Karma project page lists more than 6,000 products and payments in Celo-native assets such as cUSD.

Bando also ran a fiat on-ramp, a service for buying crypto with local currency. An early Devfolio build let users send pesos by bank transfer and receive assets on Base. The team's react-bando repository calls it a bridge from Latin American fiat currencies "to more than 20 chains". Solana Compass listed Bando because of these multi-chain spending and ramp products. Bando's public GitHub has no Solana programs, and its smart contract code is all EVM (Solidity).

The docs now carry this notice: "As of July, 2026. This protocol has been in process of deprecation." The docs subdomain (docs.bando.cool) did not resolve when we checked in October 2026. The spending app and widget repositories were last updated in October 2025. Treat the spending product as winding down. Don't count on it for new purchases.

Who is Bando for?

The treasury product suits one buyer: a Mexican company with spare pesos. It wants short-term bond yield or dollar exposure, and it wants to get its cash back fast. Sign-up asks for a legal company name and a company representative. It is not built for individuals.

It is not a fit for:

• Solana users. We found no Solana integration in the current product.
• Individuals who want to spend crypto. The gift card and top-up protocol is being deprecated.
• Companies outside Mexico. The deposit route is SPEI and the yield asset is peso-denominated.

Is Bando safe? Risks to weigh

• Early stage. Bando relaunched as a treasury business in March 2026 with a team of three, per the Stellar Community Fund. It names one client, unnamed. Track record is short.
• Pivot history. The company has now deprecated one product line within about three years of founding. Its original documentation domain no longer resolves.
• Layered counterparties. Your exposure runs through Bando's platform and wallets, then Etherfuse's token, then the custodians holding the real bonds. Etherfuse says its reserves sit with regulated custodians including BBVA, Shinhan and B3. It says it publishes weekly proof of reserves and that OtterSec and Highland Security audited its contracts. Those claims cover Etherfuse's token, not Bando's platform. We found no published audit or regulatory licence for Bando Treasury itself.
• Custody. Bando says it uses programmatic MPC wallets. It has not said who holds the key shares or what happens to client assets if Bando shuts down.
• Peso and rate risk. CETES are denominated in pesos. Returns in dollar terms depend on the exchange rate, and yields change with Mexican interest rates.
• Old spending protocol. Its EVM contracts are being retired. We could not verify an audit report for them, so we make no claim about their audit status.

Bando alternatives

The closest alternative is to buy from Etherfuse direct. Its CETES tokens are issued on Stellar, Solana and other chains, its website says. That suits a crypto user who already holds a wallet. It skips Bando's company dashboard. What Bando adds is a peso deposit by bank transfer, company sign-up, and one view across several firms. The old-school route is a Mexican broker. Bando says that takes weeks to open.

Bando team and history

Bando's homepage gives no founding details. The March 2026 newsletter names Abraham Cobos as CTO. Bando publishes Frontera, a weekly newsletter on Latin American stablecoins and payments, which covered its pivot and events such as Bitso's stablecoin conference in May 2026. Bando has no token. Any "BANDO" or similarly named token trading on DEXs is not related to bando.cool.