Brazil’s Nubank (NYSE: NU), the digital bank that has scaled to more than 140 million customers across Latin America with roughly 10,000 employees and no physical branches, has taken concrete steps into the United States while its leaders outline how artificial intelligence could expand credit access worldwide.
The Fintech company launched US operations on September 10, 2026, through a partnership with Lead Bank rather than waiting for full regulatory approval of its own national bank charter.
In parallel, founder and CEO David Vélez and co-founder Cristina Junqueira have discussed the efficiency advantages that underpin the model and the role of proprietary AI in serving underserved populations.
In a recent conversation, Vélez framed global retail financial services as still dominated by branch-based incumbents that control the vast majority of a roughly $10 trillion industry.
He argued that digital platforms have so far captured only a small share and that AI represents a further multiplier. Vélez described three core problems the industry must address: access, cost, and intelligence.
On access, he pointed to approximately three billion adults worldwide who lack any credit product, noting low credit-card penetration in markets such as Mexico and Colombia.
Nubank itself has issued first-ever credit cards to tens of millions of customers in Latin America, often starting with very small lines that later expanded as payment data accumulated.
Cost advantages flow from the branchless model.
Vélez noted that traditional competitors serving around 100 million customers typically require on the order of 100,000 employees and thousands of branches, while Nubank’s cost to serve is a small fraction of that baseline.
He highlighted a related US inefficiency: banks hold large retail deposit balances yet pay very low rates relative to market benchmarks, creating a substantial gap that effectively subsidizes branch networks at the expense of depositors, particularly those with lower balances.
On intelligence, Vélez described Nubank’s development of an in-house foundation model for credit decisions—trained on extensive proprietary transaction and behavioral data after acquiring a Palo Alto startup—positioning it as among the first financial institutions to build such a system specifically for underwriting.
The model has been applied in Brazil and is extending to other markets and use cases such as fraud.
Cristina Junqueira, who relocated to lead the U.S. effort after previously overseeing operations in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, elaborated on scale and strategy in a recent interview.
With Nubank now reaching roughly 64 percent of Brazilian adults in its home market and more than 140 million customers overall, she emphasized that the US entry targets the mass-affluent segment—an upper portion of the broader mass market numbering roughly 50–60 million people.
These customers earn solid incomes and hold savings yet often face fees, limited yield on deposits, and restricted access to premium features.
She observed that the US credit-card market shares more characteristics with Mexico than with Brazil, including patterns of use for financing and opportunities to grow the overall market rather than simply competing for existing users.
Initial traction is expected among Latin American expatriates already familiar with the brand, leveraging organic word-of-mouth that has driven the majority of growth in core markets.
Junqueira stressed prioritizing customer satisfaction metrics over pure headcount expansion and noted that the company’s fully digital model allows efficiencies to be returned to users through better yields and lower fees.
The US launch itself, announced at an event at Nu Stadium in Miami, includes a deposit account offering 3.50 percent APY with daily interest accrual (deposits held at the FDIC-insured partner bank), a no-annual-fee credit card with unlimited 1.5 percent cashback (boostable under conditions), limited-edition metal cards, and fee-free domestic and international transfers starting with corridors to Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.
Concurrently, the company introduced Nu Global, a multi-currency account that converts balances into dollar- or euro-pegged stablecoins for yields and supports fee-free movement across more than 35 countries, along with a virtual card and selected digital-asset trading.
Nu received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national bank charter in January 2026; full approvals from other regulators remain pending, with the partner-bank structure enabling earlier customer feedback.
Official statements from Vélez and Junqueira framed the move as the start of a longer effort to extend a customer-centric, mobile-first approach beyond Latin America, where the Fintech focused company has already demonstrated scale, profitability, and high activity rates.
The comments and the launch illustrate Nubank’s bet that low-cost digital infrastructure, combined with data-driven AI for credit and advice, can broaden access while competing on efficiency in mature markets. Whether the same playbook that grew the customer base from 35 million five years ago to 140 million today translates in the United States will depend on brand building, underwriting adaptation within US rules, and execution against entrenched incumbents.