Doll and Ken Parks“We cannot display your balance. Please try again later.”That was all 20-year-old nursing student Deisy Asva could see of her life savings on Tuesday morning when she attempted toto her account at Ueno Bank SA, which caters to one in every three Paraguayans. Shortly after 3 a.m., while most of the country was asleep, Paraguay’s central bank announced the lender’s shutdown over a solvency crisis.

The public prosecutor’s office then launched an investigation, issuing arrest warrants for at least eight people tied to Ueno, including Miguel Vázquez, chairman of the lender’s controlling shareholder, Grupo Vázquez. President Santiago Peña was previously an investor in Ueno’s holding company, selling his stake in March 2025. Regulators have insisted that the situation is isolated, and that deposits of up to 228 million guaranies ($37,400) would be guaranteed — which the central bank has 15 days to return.

Still, that’s been little comfort to customers like Asva who are struggling to figure out how to pay for everything from rent and groceries to bus rides now that their deposits have been frozen. In the capital of Asuncion, customers gathered outside shuttered branches looking for answers.

Hundreds crowded around a Ueno location in Ciudad del Este, while complaints from customers unable to access their money flooded social media. The National Police went on full security alert and deployed officers to bank locations across the country. For Asva, who lives in San Lorenzo, just outside Asuncion, the shutdown means temporarily losing access to the account she used every day to reload her transit card, buy snacks at university and cover other routine expenses.

She also has university fees due Saturday. “With so much technology available nowadays, how can this take 15 days?” she said.

“I’m going to have to borrow money from my family.”The scale of the disruption reflects just how deeply Ueno had embedded itself in Paraguayans’ everyday finances. The bank said in June it had more than 2.9 million customers — in a country of roughly 6.1 million people — and processed more than 3 million transactions a day. More than 32,000 retirees used it to collect their pensions from IPS, Paraguay’s social security agency. Just hours before the central bank’s announcement, Ueno was still enticing customers to put more money into the bank.

Late Monday night, accountant Rocío Zárate transferred 1 million guaranies into her Ueno account, tempted by one of the generous promotions that helped fuel the lender’s rapid expansion.

Customers who brought fresh money into the bank and kept it there until Nov. 7 were being offered a 50% rebate on a credit-card purchase. A few hours hours later, Paraguay’s central bank announced it was placing Ueno into resolution after determining its solvency ratio had fallen below the 50% required minimum after adjustments to its balance statements.

“I was getting ready to leave for work when my uncle asked me, ‘Do you have money in Ueno? Because the bank was intervened,’” said Zárate, 36, who already had another 2 million guaranies at the lender.

“It was very shocking. It completely caught me by surprise.”Tensions boiled over in Nemby, outside the capital, where a 45-year-old customer smashed a glass door at a Ueno branch after going there seeking information about his savings, according to local newspaper Última Hora. He cut his leg and was taken for medical treatment before prosecutors summoned him over the incident.

Ueno’s shutdown is also rippling through businesses that had come to rely on the digital bank. Paraguay’s association of importers and retailers warned of a “semi-paralysis” in commerce, saying two-thirds of electronic transactions at large retail stores were made through Ueno accounts.

María Elena González, a 41-year-old business administrator and consulting-firm manager, used Ueno to receive rental payments on an apartment she owns with her husband. As soon as she heard the news Tuesday morning, she told him to make sure their tenants stopped transferring money into the account.

“I was very surprised,” González said. Her bigger concern is retirement. González has contributed to the IPS pension system for 18 years, which has about $300 million deposited at Ueno. With another decade of contributions ahead, she worries about whether the fund will have enough money when she retires. “I don’t know what this fund will look like in 10 years,” she said.

The central bank has sought to contain the panic, describing Ueno’s problems as isolated and saying Paraguay’s broader financial system remains healthy. About 97% of Ueno depositors have balances within the government-backed deposit guarantee, according to officials.

But even customers who expect to recover all their money face an immediate problem: getting through the days or weeks until they can access it.

For Zárate, whatever confidence she had in Ueno is already gone. “As soon as they give me my money back,” she said, “I’m going to move it immediately to a bank I trust.”