Nubank didn't wait for its charter. On September 10, 2026, Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU), the company behind Latin America's largest digital bank, opened for business in the United States with a full consumer banking suite powered by Kansas City-based Lead Bank. The launch lands well ahead of the 2027 timeline most observers had pencilled in, and it comes with a second announcement aimed squarely at people who live across borders: Nu Global, a stablecoin-powered multi-currency account.
A shortcut around the charter timeline
In January 2026, Nu received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to form a US national bank, to be called Nubank, N.A. That approval was only the beginning. Regulators gave Nu 12 months to fully fund the bank and 18 months to start operations, and the company still needed additional sign-offs from the FDIC and the Federal Reserve. At the time, a 2027 go-live looked like the realistic scenario, as we noted when Nu first unveiled its US launch and global expansion plans.
Instead, Nu has gone live through a partner bank model. Customer deposits are held at Lead Bank, Member FDIC, which also issues the Nu Credit Card. Legally, Nu operates in the US as a financial technology company, not a bank. The company is clear that the national charter remains the long-term plan; the partner route simply lets it start acquiring customers and gathering product feedback now instead of sitting idle through the organisation phase.
Who is Lead Bank?
Lead is not a household name, and that is by design. Chartered in 1928 as Garden City Bank, it is a Missouri state-chartered institution that has evolved from a small community lender outside Kansas City into one of the most active sponsor banks for American fintechs. A team led by former Square executive Jackie Reses acquired it in 2022 for $56 million. In September 2025, it closed a $70 million Series B at a $1.47 billion valuation, with backers including Ribbit Capital, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ.
Its partner list already reads like a fintech who's who: Lead powers Stripe and Visa's stablecoin-linked card platform, works with workplace payments company Branch, and originates buy-now-pay-later loans for Affirm. Nu, with more than 140 million customers across Latin America, is likely its highest-profile consumer program yet.
What American customers get
Nu is entering the US with the same recipe that made it a phenomenon in Brazil: no fees, strong yield and a premium feel.
The Nu Account pays 3.50% APY on every dollar, with interest calculated and paid daily and no minimum balance required. It comes with a limited-edition metal debit card, savings goals with instant access to funds, and fee-free domestic and international transfers that settle in minutes. International transfers start with Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, with dozens of additional countries promised.
The Nu Credit Card, issued through an exclusive partnership with Mastercard, carries no annual fee and offers unlimited 1.5% cashback on every purchase, rising to 2% for customers who meet qualifying conditions (coming soon). It also includes Mastercard World Elite benefits and, naturally, a metal card.
The two products are built to pull on each other. Soon, customers who hold both the account and the card and make at least three eligible card transactions within 34 days will earn 4.50% APY on up to $10,000 held in savings goals. Balances above that threshold earn the standard 3.50%.
Why the partner-bank move is smart, and where it's risky
The obvious reading is speed. Nu has already spent heavily on US brand awareness, including the naming rights to Nu Stadium, Inter Miami CF's new home, announced in March 2026. Every month without a product to sell was a month of marketing with nothing behind it.
The less obvious reading is targeting. The first international corridors are Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, and the US headquarters is in Miami. Nu isn't trying to win over all of America on day one. It is starting with the Latin American diaspora, a community that already knows the brand, sends money home regularly, and has historically been poorly served on remittance fees. That is a far more credible beachhead than a generic "better checking account" pitch.
The bundle is also revealing. A 4.50% yield tied to card usage is not generosity; it's customer acquisition for the credit card, which is where Nu has historically made its money. Expect the savings rate to do the marketing and the card to do the earning.
The risks are real, though. The US is not Brazil. Nu's original success came from attacking a concentrated, fee-heavy banking oligopoly, whereas the US market is fragmented, fiercely competitive, and full of cashback cards and high-yield savings accounts. There's also no national instant-payment system with the ubiquity of Brazil's Pix. And the sponsor-bank model itself has been under intense scrutiny since the 2024 collapse of middleware provider Synapse left thousands of fintech customers unable to access their funds. Nu's relationship with Lead is direct rather than through a middleware layer, but for now its US reputation rests partly on a bank it doesn't control. That makes the national charter less of a nice-to-have and more of a necessity.
Nu Global: a dollar and euro account built on stablecoins
The US launch will grab the headlines, but Nu Global may be the more interesting product. It is a multi-currency digital account designed for people with international lives, and it works very differently from a traditional bank account.
Instead of holding dollars and euros in a bank, Nu Global converts all deposits into digital dollars (USDC) or digital euros (EURC), two stablecoins pegged to the US dollar and the euro. Dollar balances earn a daily yield of 3.50% APY, euro balances 2.20% APY. The account comes with a virtual Mastercard for spending worldwide at exchange rates without markups, and the option to hold and trade selected digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Support is multilingual and available around the clock.
On the payments side, customers can send and receive money free of charge across more than 35 countries. The first transfer corridors cover Europe and Latin America, with integrations for Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and the US planned in the coming months. The ability to hold euros via EURC and move them cheaply puts Nu Global in the same conversation as Revolut and Wise for cross-border money management, but with a stablecoin architecture rather than traditional banking rails, an approach we covered in our analysis of stablecoin neobanks.
The bigger picture
Nu arrives in the US from a position of rare strength for a neobank. It just posted a record quarter with more than 140 million customers, quarterly net income above $1 billion and a return on equity above 32%. In Brazil, it serves over 60% of the adult population; in Mexico, it is the largest digital bank; and in Colombia, it ranks fourth among financial institutions by deposits.
CEO David Vélez calls the US launch "the first milestone of a multi-decade journey" toward becoming the world's leading digital bank. With Nu now moving north and going after cross-border users with Nu Global, and Revolut pursuing its own licences from Australia to the United States, the race to build the first truly global neobank has become a two-horse contest coming from opposite ends of the world.
The US product is available to sign up for now at nu.com, with the first registrants eligible for Nu's limited-edition metal cards. To see how Nubank stacks up against other neobanks, check out our Nubank app profile, and for background on how Nu got here, read our earlier piece on Nu's US launch and global expansion plans.