The next move of Latin America's largest digital bank.

Author: KarenZ, Foresight News

A digital bank born in a small house in São Paulo in 2013 is attempting to step beyond Latin America.

Over 140 million customers—this is the customer base Nu accumulated before expanding beyond Latin America.

As of September 10, 2026, Nu's total number of customers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia has exceeded 140 million. For reference, the World Bank estimates the total population of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2025 to be approximately 667 million. Roughly calculated, Nu's customer base accounts for about 21%—(MISSING)—roughly one-fifth of the region's total population.

In Brazil, where Nu started, the comparison is even more striking. Nu disclosed at the end of Q2 2026 that its customer count in Brazil was close to 118 million; the World Bank's 2025 population data for Brazil is approximately 212.8 million. By this calculation, Nu's customer base in Brazil accounts for about 55%—(MISSING)—more than half of the country's total population.

However, these ratios are only to help understand Nu's scale and may not directly translate to population penetration. The statistical timeframes for customer count and population are different. Before this international expansion, Nu's core business was mainly focused on Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

In September 2026, this digital financial platform that grew from Brazil began to expand beyond Latin America: launching operations in the U.S. while rolling out Nu Global for cross-border users.

What is Nu Global?

On September 10, 2026, Nu announced two things simultaneously: officially launching operations in the U.S. and rolling out Nu Global. The two are easily confused, but they are actually different products with different legal structures.

Nu's U.S. offering includes accounts and credit cards for daily banking needs. Currently, deposits are held by Lead Bank, a member of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC); while Nu has received conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national bank, the bank is still in the preparation phase and needs to meet regulatory requirements and obtain other necessary approvals.

Nu Global is provided by Nu Global AG, a Swiss legal entity under Nu Holdings, and customers enter into contractual relationships with this entity. It mainly targets individuals with cross-border living, working, and asset management needs. At launch, it announced that it supports fund transfers in more than 35 countries across Europe and Latin America; further integration with Nu's operations in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and the U.S. is planned in the following months.

On its product page, Nu Global highlights balances in the form of "digital dollars" (USDC) and "digital euros" (EURC), with annualized yields of 3.50% and (MISSING) 2.20% respectively at launch, (MISSING) and earnings are credited daily.

The official terms also state that accounts can hold supported fiat currencies and crypto assets. The specific supported deposit currencies, whether funds need to be exchanged, and applicable yield conditions are subject to the actual information provided by the Nu Global App.

In addition to buying and selling digital assets within the app, Nu Global allows eligible customers to transfer supported crypto assets between their accounts and external wallets. This means that assets like BTC and ETH can be transferred into or out of Nu Global (once the corresponding functions are available and approved by the platform) without being automatically converted to USDC or EURC upon entry into the account.

However, this is not completely unrestricted on-chain transfer. According to Section 6.1 of Nu Global's terms, external transfers can only be completed via whitelisted wallet addresses and must comply with the Travel Rule: financial intermediaries involved in the transfer need to collect or share relevant information about the sender and recipient. This function may not be available to all customers, nor does it necessarily cover all crypto assets supported by Nu Global; Nu Global also reserves the right to reject and return transferred assets.

Additionally, the account comes with a Mastercard virtual card. According to the service terms, fiat balances will be used first for payments; if the fiat balance is insufficient, the system may sell the corresponding crypto assets as authorized by the user.

There is another easily overlooked restriction: Nu Global's current terms explicitly exclude U.S. citizens, U.S. residents, green card holders, and individuals who meet the U.S. "substantial presence test". Therefore, Nu Global is not an international remittance feature attached to Nu's U.S. accounts; the two businesses were just launched on the same day.

Web3 Infrastructure Supporting Nu Global

The highlight of Nu Global is not just allowing users to buy and sell crypto assets within the app, but integrating stablecoin balances, digital asset custody and trading, cross-border payments, and card spending into a single account experience.

Among them, USDC and EURC are issued by Circle. In Nu Global, they are not only digital assets available for purchase and sale but also used to carry account balances pegged to the U.S. dollar and euro, as well as corresponding yield functions. Previously, Nubank had already introduced USDC in its Nubank Cripto service within the Brazilian app, accumulating operational experience for subsequent stablecoin products.

Another key piece of the puzzle for Nu Global is Sygnum, a Swiss digital asset bank. According to the joint announcement, Sygnum provides Nu Global with fiat-crypto conversion, digital asset trading, stablecoin services, and institutional-grade custody. This means Nu is responsible for the product entry and user experience, while Sygnum handles a significant portion of the backend digital asset banking infrastructure.

In the original Nubank Cripto business in Brazil, Nu also introduced Fireblocks and Talos: Fireblocks is used for digital asset operation and custody infrastructure, while Talos' smart order routing connects different liquidity providers to optimize execution prices when buying or selling crypto assets with Brazilian Reais. These partnerships should not be directly taken as the entire technical architecture of Nu Global, but they indicate that Nu adopts a "self-built front-end, combined professional infrastructure for back-end" approach.

Nu's Web3 Layout: From "Being Able to Buy Crypto" to "Money Can Move Cross-Border"

In Brazil, Nubank launched Nubank Cripto in 2022. This is not an independent company but a crypto asset service within the Nubank app, allowing users to buy, sell, and hold digital assets.

In the same year, Nubank announced plans to develop Nucoin based on Polygon, hoping to use it for customer loyalty and rewards; in 2025, Nubank began testing a redesigned NuCoin customer relationship program, linking its acquisition to daily behaviors such as using debit cards and paying bills on time.

Since then, Nubank has continued to add features to Nubank Cripto. In 2023, Nubank introduced USDC to Nubank Cripto; in 2024, it launched crypto-to-crypto exchange in the service, allowing users to directly exchange BTC, ETH, SOL, and UNI with USDC; in 2025, Nubank expanded the USDC reward program to all eligible Nubank Cripto users in Brazil.

Notably, Nu also started integrating Bitcoin Lightning Network and Universal Money Addresses (UMA) with Lightspark in 2024, aiming to reduce the cost and waiting time of Bitcoin and fiat transfers.

In 2026, Nubank launched the staking-based Earn Crypto feature in Nubank Cripto, initially supporting SOL; at that time, Nubank disclosed that Nubank Cripto had more than 7 million customers.

Unlike the above-mentioned Brazilian business, the recently launched Nu Global is an international digital account provided by the Swiss entity Nu Global AG, integrating digital dollars, digital euros, cross-border payments, card spending, and digital asset trading into a single account.

From Nubank Cripto to Nu Global, we can see a gradually expanding product range: initially allowing users to buy and sell crypto assets within the Nubank app, then adding stablecoins, crypto-to-crypto exchange, and yield functions, and further exploring the combination of stablecoin balances with cross-border financial services.

How is Nu's Financial Performance?

Nu's decision to enter the U.S. and launch Nu Global in 2026 is related to the growth and profitability of its core business.

According to Nu's Q2 financial report, as of the end of Q2 2026, Nu had 139 million customers, an increase of about 4 million in the quarter. Among them, Brazilian customers were close to 118 million, Mexican customers reached 15.8 million, and Colombian customers exceeded 5 million. By September, when it announced its U.S. operations and Nu Global, its total customer count further exceeded 140 million.

In Q2 2026, Nu achieved nearly $5.9 billion in total revenue, a 39% year-over-year increase on a currency-neutral basis; (MISSING) net income reached $1.1 billion for the first time, up 49% year-over-year, (MISSING) and 17% quarter-over-quarter; (MISSING) return on equity reached 33%. (MISSING) Monthly active rate rose to 83.5%, (MISSING) and average revenue per user was about $17.

The balance sheet also continued to expand. In the same period, Nu's loan portfolio reached $39.4 billion, a 37% year-over-year increase; (MISSING) customer deposits reached $45.3 billion, an 18% year-over-year increase. (MISSING) These data indicate that Nu is no longer just expanding its scale by acquiring new customers, but also improving customer activity, credit scale, and per-user revenue.

From Nubank Cripto to Nu Global, Nu is gradually extending digital assets from an in-app investment function to account balances, earnings, spending, and cross-border transfers.