NU: Disrupting Latin America
NU is Brazil’s largest digital bank, growing fast across Latin America with 50–70% growth, trading at 17x P/E. A generational compounder in the making
Nubank, trading under the ticker $NU, has pulled off what most banks could only dream of. It became the largest bank in Brazil in just 12 years. Not through acquisitions, legacy infrastructure, or decades of policy-backed dominance. But by building an intuitive, digital-first banking experience from scratch and scaling it across one of the most complex regions in the world: Latin America.
And now it’s just getting started.
$NU isn’t merely a neobank anymore. It’s morphing into a full-stack financial ecosystem, and if you zoom out, the opportunity is massive.
International Expansion is Already Working
Nubank’s international expansion is already a success story.
Mexico: over 10 million active customers
Colombia: 2.5 million active customers
In Mexico, Nu already serves 12% of the country’s adult population. And the growth isn’t slowing down. Deposits in Mexico are up 438% YoY.
And here’s the kicker: $NU has already hinted at expanding beyond Latin America. From the Q4 2024 earnings call:
“The basic hypothesis of Nubank since 2013 is that the digital banking model we are growing is the right business model to bank 80–90% of the world population… over the next 10 years, we'll continue to go after that hypothesis of testing this model in more countries beyond Latin America.”
Nu isn’t just winning in Latin America, it’s quietly planting seeds across the globe.
The company has already made strategic investments in several digital banks around the world, showing clear intent to expand its influence far beyond its home base.
In 2021, Nubank co-led a $45 million investment in Indian neobank Jupiter. Jupiter has built a fully digital banking experience tailored to Indian consumers. The platform launched in beta that same year and has focused on creating a more intuitive, customer-first banking model, something that aligns closely with Nu’s own philosophy.
More recently, Nu made headlines by leading a $250 million round in African digital bank Tyme, valuing it at $1.5 billion. Founded in 2019, Tyme Group operates a hybrid digital banking model that combines online services with physical service points. Its mission is to scale digital banking across emerging markets.
Tyme is already active in South Africa and the Philippines, with plans to expand into Vietnam and Indonesia next year.
TymeBank, its South African brand, has 10 million users
GoTyme, launched in 2022 in partnership with the Gokongwei Group in the Philippines, now has 5 million users
Combined, they’ve attracted 15 million customers, raised over $400 million in deposits, and provided over $600 million in financing to small businesses across both markets.
Here’s what David Vélez, founder and CEO of Nubank, had to say:
“Since the beginning of Nubank, we have believed that the future of financial services globally is of digitally-native companies. We have met dozens of teams across different geographies, and we think that Tyme Group is extremely well-positioned to be one of the digital bank leaders in Africa and Southeast Asia. We are excited to work with Tyme to share many of our learnings of scaling this model to hundreds of millions of customers.”
Nu is also considering moving its legal domicile to the United Kingdom ahead of its planned global expansion.
Currently domiciled in the Cayman Islands, Nu Holdings is evaluating strategic jurisdictions as it looks to scale internationally.
“We are actively thinking what are some of the jurisdictions that make sense for us to consider, as we think about the next 10 years of global expansion,” said CEO David Vélez in a recent interview with Reuters.
Nubank is eyeing expansion into emerging markets similar to Brazil and Mexico, with a timeline of the next 18 to 24 months.
That means it wouldn’t be surprising to see Nu enter markets like India, Indonesia, or Thailand in the near future, alongside continued growth in Latin America. Each of these markets has a massive underbanked population, and tapping into them would exponentially expand Nu’s total addressable market.
In short, Nu isn’t just executing on a local or regional level. They’re thinking globally, investing early, and laying the groundwork to become a truly global digital banking powerhouse.
A Digital Bank Built for Scale
Traditional banks in Latin America operate like slow-moving giants, weighed down by bureaucracy and bloated infrastructure. $NU flipped the script.
This is a fully digital bank that:
Is extremely user-friendly
Offers attractive yields on savings
Has low distribution costs
Moves fast, iterates faster
That’s why $NU has among the highest NPS scores in the industry. The product works. Customers love it. And the network effects are compounding.
You don’t build a 95 million customer base by luck. Nu is executing flawlessly, and that same playbook can be deployed in other markets.
Argentina is already in their sights, they’re registered in Chile, and realistically, they have a superior model built to win over the traditionally underbanked populations across Latin America.
Strong 2024 Results, and a Tailwind for 2025
The stock is now trading at just 17x forward earnings. That’s absurd given the kind of growth we’re seeing.
In 2024 alone:
Active customers up 22%
Deposits up 55%
Interest-Earning Portfolio up 75%
Revenue up 56% YoY
Gross profit up 67% YoY
Net interest income up 63% YoY
ARPAC (Monthly Avg Revenue per Active Customer) up 25% YoY
Customer base up 23% YoY
At this scale, those numbers are insane.
There was some noise in the latest results due to FX impact. But here’s the thing: that’s not a recurring issue.
In fact, it’s now turning into a tailwind. The BRL is up 14% YTD against the USD, which should start boosting reported results in USD over the next few quarters.
Not Just a Bank Anymore
A big part of the Nu bull thesis is in product diversification. Nu isn’t stopping at banking.
They’ve already launched:
A Marketplace with over 1 million active users
NuViagens (travel services)
NuCel (telecom initiative via strategic partnerships)
With a strong brand and a massive user base, they can now monetize through adjacencies while keeping CAC low. Think of what Apple did with the App Store and Services. Nubank is laying the same kind of groundwork, but in finance.
They’re also competing with travel apps, and slowly eating into other verticals where trust and payment infrastructure matter.
And then there’s Ultravioleta, their premium product, already at 700,000 customers (+132% YoY), driving high-margin volume. In Q4 alone, Ultravioleta credit cards handled $1.8 billion in purchases, accounting for 10% of all credit card purchase volume in Brazil.
That’s real traction.
What You’re Buying at 17x P/E
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