Nubank

Nubank, which does business outside Brazil as Nu and is held by the NYSE- and B3-listed Nu Holdings Ltd., is a Brazilian neobank headquartered in São Paulo. It is not formally part of Brazil's National Financial System but operates as a financial and payment institution regulated and supervised by the Central Bank of Brazil. Sources describe it as the largest fintech bank in Latin America, with around 131 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia and 2025 revenue of about $16.3 billion.

The product range centres on a no-fee international Mastercard credit card managed entirely through a mobile app, alongside the NuConta digital account, debit and Pix payments, personal loans, life insurance, investments and a cashback/rewards program. The Brazilian website presents several tiers and lines — standard Nubank, Nubank Croma, Nubank Ultravioleta (positioned for travel) and Nu Empresas for businesses — plus features such as Caixinhas savings buckets, virtual cards, NuPay instalment payments (up to 24x), salary portability, ATM withdrawals, payroll and FGTS anniversary-withdrawal advances, public-sector and INSS payroll loans, accounts for under-18s, digital wallet support (Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay), Detran vehicle-tax payments and a shopping marketplace. The account is marketed as free of maintenance fees with a daily yield of 100% of the CDI, and the Caixinha Turbo feature raising yield to 115%–120% of the CDI; deposits are held either as payment-account balances or as RDB fixed-income receipts issued by Nu Financeira with FGC coverage.

Support is offered 24 hours a day through in-app chat, telephone lines and an ombudsman channel, and the company promotes anti-fraud features such as spending limits in "modo rua" and real-time alerts for suspicious transactions.

Founding story

Nubank was founded on 6 May 2013 in São Paulo by Colombian David Vélez, together with Brazilian Cristina Junqueira and American engineer Edward Wible. Vélez, a Stanford graduate who had worked at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and General Atlantic before becoming a Sequoia Capital partner tasked in 2011 with opening the firm's Brazil presence, found opening a local bank account bureaucratic and expensive and concluded that technology could make banking more accessible in a market dominated by a handful of high-fee incumbents. He raised a seed round from Sequoia and, on investor advice, recruited Junqueira — then a credit card portfolio manager at Itaú Unibanco who had proposed commission-free cards internally — and Wible. The name combines "nu" (phonetically close to "new" and meaning "nude" in Portuguese), intended to signal a transparent approach to banking; the founders and early employees were the first customers.

Business model

Nubank operates as a regulated financial and payment institution offering consumer and small-business banking products through a mobile app rather than branches: credit cards, deposit accounts, payments, personal and payroll loans, insurance and investments. Sources do not itemise the revenue split, but the company reported 2025 revenue of $16.3 billion and net income of $2.87 billion, with total assets of $74.89 billion.

Products such as the credit card and the digital account are marketed without annual or maintenance fees; revenue-generating lines described in the sources include credit cards and lines of credit, personal loans, payroll and FGTS-advance lending, insurance, investments (including RDB deposits issued by Nu Financeira) and a paid rewards program charged after a 30-day free trial.

Traction

Customer numbers grew from over 12 million in Brazil in 2019 to 34 million in January 2021, 40 million in June 2021, over 100 million across three countries in 2024 and around 131 million in 2025; the Brazilian website cites 130 million people who have chosen Nu. Reported 2025 financials include $16.3 billion revenue, $2.87 billion net income, $74.89 billion total assets, $11.3 billion equity and 10,027 employees. Mexican credit card NPS was reported at 93 in mid-2021, versus a Brazilian peak of 88.

Latest developments

Recent items reported in the sources are the March 2025 OpenAI partnership for enterprise search and customer-service support, conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in January 2026 to establish a national banking presence in the United States, and a multiyear partnership with Inter Miami CF announced 4 March 2026 under which Nu becomes a Main Partner and the club's new Miami Freedom Park stadium will be named Nu Stadium. The company website also highlights a brand refresh, a Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team tie-up and the Nu Cine Copan cultural project.