When Inter Miami Football Club unveiled its custom-built stadium this spring, many people in Florida assumed that the building’s name – Nu – was simply a cute, modern way to spell new.
Brazilians and many in the Miami tech community knew better. They recognized the name of the powerhouse that holds the naming rights: Nu, the Brazil-based digital bank that ranks as Latin America’s largest, serving 140 million customers and preparing to enter the US market.
Florida – and all the US, for that matter – will soon become familiar with Nu too, as the New York Stock Exchange-traded company builds nationwide from its US headquarters in the Miami area, led by its co-founder Cristina Junqueira.
Numbers tell part of Nu’s success story: roughly $6 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profit in the second quarter of this year alone. The company’s stock market valuation now nears $70 billion, nearly double the value of its initial public offering in 2021.
But perhaps the bigger story is how customers adore the bank. Nearly two in three Brazilian adults now have an account, many from rural areas or low-income groups that were underserved or never served by Brazil’s traditional banks. Some clients are so thankful for the life-changing credit they’ve obtained that they’ve celebrated the bank with cakes in Nu’s signature color of purple.
“We want our customers to love us fanatically,” the bank proclaims.
Building the brand
Now, Nu wants to build that brand love in the US, serving not only US Latinos or Latin Americans doing business in the US but all US residents – competing with major banks, just as it has done in Brazil, and more recently, in Colombia and Mexico, executives say.
Nu, formerly known as Nubank, already has conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to open a US chartered bank and is working through requirements to start up in the US. It’s getting out its name not only through Inter Miami’s Nu stadium but also through a multi-year, global partnership with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One car-racing team.
“This [Formula One] partnership gives us a powerful opportunity to connect with hundreds of millions of fans in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, the United States and beyond,” Junqueira said in announcing the Mercedes F1 alliance in January. “Building a global brand is a multi-year journey, and there is much more to come.”
How Nu started and grew in Brazil
Nu’s story begins in an unlikely way – in Silicon Valley. Venture capital firm Sequoia sent one of its executives, Colombia-born David Velez, to see about setting up an office in Brazil.
Velez analyzed the Brazilian market and saw opportunity instead in a digital bank that could serve the mass-market with few or no fees, unburdened with the costs of traditional banks in large branch networks and older technology.
In 2013, Velez, Brazilian banker Junqueira and US techie Edward Wible co-founded Nubank, eager to create long-term relations with previously underserved or unbanked clients in Brazil. They first offered a credit card with no annual fee.
By 2018, backed by investments from Sequoia and other financial heavyweights, Nu became a “unicorn,” valued at $1 billion. By 2019, it entered Mexico and in 2020, started up in Colombia.
“This [US] approval isn’t just an expansion of our operation; it’s an opportunity to prove our thesis that a digital-first, customer-centric model is the future of financial services globally,” Velez, Nu’s chairman and CEO [pictured above], said in announcing the preliminary US approval in January.
Growing in the US from Coral Gables
To expand in the US, Nu has set up a temporary office in Coral Gables and plans a permanent one there later. Besides Junqueira, the venture will be assisted by Roberto Campos Neto, former president of the Central Bank of Brazil, who serves as chairman of Nu’s US board of directors.
Nu also has opened strategic US hubs in the San Francisco Bay area, northern Virginia, and the North Carolina Research Triangle.
The US market offers tremendous opportunity for the Brazilian bank, but also immense competition spanning some 4,000 banks, 4,000 credit unions and hundreds of consumer-banking fintech companies, analysts say.
Velez told Forbes magazine that initially, Nu won’t target the wealthiest 10 percent of US customers who are largely content with their banking relations, but rather will seek out niches of folks facing consumer pain, including high fees. Plans call for first offering a bank account, debit card, credit card and interest-bearing savings, with personal loans to be added later.
The bank’s innovations and scope have earned numerous awards, including Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, Latin Finance’s Digital Bank of the Year and Forbes’ World’s Best Banks. Its reputation is also getting a boost these days from soccer great Lionel Messi playing beautifully for Inter Miami at Nu Stadium.
- Brazil-based digital bank Nu prepares to start US operations, building from its US headquarters in South Florida – September 3, 2026
- IOScholarships’ free platform matches applicants to funding, aims to help minorities enter colleges, tech-jobs – September 1, 2026
- Humanoid robots to clean your house? Faireez now offers people for housekeeping, as it collects data to train robots – August 26, 2026
