Brazilian neobank Stark Bank has applied for a U.S. national bank charter, adding another name to the growing list of fintechs seeking their own U.S. bank licenses this year.
The application, submitted July 15 to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., seeks approval to organize Stark Bank as an insured national bank based in the Miami area, with a back-office administrative location near Orlando. Neither site would be open to the public.
Stark Bank already provides API-powered banking and corporate card services to businesses in Latin America and internationally. Its proposed U.S. bank would extend that model by targeting American companies with operational, ownership, or commercial ties to Latin American markets, a customer base the company says it can reach through existing trust built with its Brazilian operations.
The bank’s product lineup would include payment processing, deposit accounts, treasury management, corporate credit cards, merchant acquiring, business loans and expense management tools, delivered through a single digital interface. The bank will not offer consumer products, cash services, paper checks, or image check processing. Loan products would include secured and unsecured commercial credit cards, lines of credit secured by accounts receivable, and term loans secured by securities or deposits.
The application leans into Stark’s technology as a differentiator, citing STARK-API, a cloud-native, microservices-based platform the company says can handle 1,700 transactions per second, along with FedNow and RTP integration for real-time settlement. Stark’s U.S. initiative won’t depend on third-party middleware providers.
The application lists Ray Colado as the proposed CEO, president, and a director. Colado was previously president of Commerce National Bank & Trust in Florida, which he helped charter roughly two decades ago. Anthony Porro is the proposed chief of staff and chief of operations, and Rafael Stark is listed as a proposed director.
The application’s roster of independent directors includes Grovetta Gardineer, a former senior OCC official who served as Senior Deputy Comptroller for Bank Supervision Policy. Michael Barrett and Juan Pujadas round out the independent director slate.
The public version of the filing did not disclose how much capital Stake Bank plans to infuse into the de novo.