Two years ago, Cristina Junqueira moved her family from São Paolo to Miami with a lofty goal: launch Nubank, the digital bank she cofounded, in the U.S. Nubank is a $16 billion business that over the past decade has grown to dominate in Brazil, and more recently Mexico and Colombia. Its success made Junqueira and her cofounder, Nubank’s CEO David Vélez, billionaires. (Vélez currently ranks No. 221 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $14.7 billion.)
Earlier this week, I met up with the cofounders at Nubank investor Sequoia’s office in Manhattan. They were preparing for a big announcement: their U.S. launch was imminent (and sooner than many expected). Yesterday at an event in Miami at the newly-renamed Nu Stadium, the company announced it will soon offer a whole suite of products: higher-yield deposit accounts, credit cards, and cross-border payments between 35 countries. “We thought this would be a differentiating factor,” Junqueira told me of the vast portfolio. It’s now competing with international firms like Revolut, which is also trying to enter the U.S. market. Nubank has applied for a U.S. banking license but has not received final approval yet; instead, it’s partnering with Lead Bank, which helps foreign fintechs offer products in the U.S. “We have to deal with it,” Junqueira says of the challenges of the U.S. regulatory environment. “It is what it is.”
