Nubank Sees Chance to Lure More Than Just Expats in US Expansion

Nu Holdings Ltd., Latin America’s most valuable financial firm, sees an opportunity to reach beyond just customers from that region with its planned US expansion.

“Initially, it’s pretty obvious that our early customers are going to be those early adopters,” Cristina Junqueira, co-founder and chief growth officer at the company, said on a panel at Bloomberg’s Women, Money & Power event in London Wednesday. “I think that has a possibility of resonating even with a much wider American audience beyond the Latin America community.”

The Sao Paulo-based company said Tuesday it applied for a national bank charter for its US business, where Junqueira will be chief executive officer. The fintech said it will be able to offer products such as deposit accounts, credit cards and digital-asset custody once the license is granted.

Nubank sees the US market as a “huge” opportunity, Junqueira said, as some US states have economies bigger even than Brazil’s, which is currently the company’s largest market. But the executive said the licensing process takes time, and Nubank is aiming for a long-term opportunity in the US.

Nubank has hired several US technology executives this year. Last week, it named Michael Rihani, the former product officer at Coinbase Global Inc., its new crypto officer. In August, it hired Eric Young from Snap Inc. to serve as chief technology officer.

The bank is currently Latin America’s most valuable publicly traded financial company, after jostling with Brazil’s Itau Unibanco Holding SA for the position this year.

“This is a good initial step on the addressable market expansion considering the size of the US market,” Gustavo Schroden, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., said in a note Tuesday. “However, for investors, the primary concern is the potential for management to lose focus.”

Junqueira said Nubank is not letting go of its growth opportunities in its current markets, including Brazil, which is still its only profitable operation. “There’s a lot of room for us to almost double our revenue even with the current customer base only maturing,” she said.

Nubank’s co-founder also said the company still doesn’t see much of an impact from intensifying competition in Latin America from rivals such as MercadoLibre Inc. and Revolut Inc.

“Sure, there’s more competition,” Junqueira said. “That’s great, customers have more choice, but we’re not seeing that impacting our growth so far.”

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