Imagine a bank so efficient that it costs 90 cents per month to serve a customer. Now compare that to the $12–15 it costs traditional Brazilian banks. That gap is the entire thesis behind Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU) — and it’s reshaping financial services across an entire continent.
Nu has 127 million customers. Its Net Promoter Score is in the 90s, which is almost unheard of in banking. And as of late 2025, its return on equity hit 31% — more than double the industry average. This isn’t a scrappy startup anymore. It’s a machine.
The origin story reads like a Silicon Valley script, except it happened in São Paulo. David Velez, a Colombian-born venture capitalist working for Sequoia, tried to open a local bank account in Brazil. It took months. The incumbent banks were lazy, overcharging monopolies. Velez saw the opening and built Nu from scratch — no legacy code, no bloated branches, no $15-per-customer cost structure. The technology advantage was baked in from day one.
The company started with a simple no-fee credit card and grew almost entirely through word of mouth. When critics warned about lending to unbanked borrowers, Nu answered with its “low and grow” model: issue micro-limits as small as $10, watch real-time payment behavior, and expand credit only for borrowers who prove themselves. The result? More profitable lending to underserved customers than the big banks achieve with their elite clients.
Now Nu is exporting the playbook. In Mexico, it hit 13 million customers in just two years by partnering with OXXO’s 23,000 retail locations for cash deposits. In early 2026, it received conditional approval for a US National Bank charter, eyeing the massive North-South America remittance corridor. Colombia is next.
The stock isn’t cheap at 7x book value — JPMorgan trades at 1.2 to 2.5x. But comparing Nu to a traditional bank is like comparing Netflix to Blockbuster. With its structural cost advantage and 31% ROE, Nu functions more like a high-margin software company that happens to hold deposits. For investors willing to wait for a pullback, this might be the most efficient banking operation on the planet.
