Woah!
@Nubank just got authorization to become a bank in Mexico.
15% of Mexican adults were already Nu customers before it was legally a bank.
The numbers from the press release:
- 15 million customers, adding 12,000 per day (!!!)
- $5.9bn in deposits
- 54% of customers got their first-ever credit card from Nu
- Breakeven in Q1 2026, with the efficiency ratio improving 78 percentage points
- A projected $4.2bn investment in Mexico through 2030
Nubank is a monster. Just a monster.
And the detail that got me: Nu built all of this on a SOFIPO license, a wrapper originally designed for community savings co-ops. The company calls the conversion "unprecedented" because no SOFIPO has ever transformed into a bank before. Nu is the first.
Which makes Mexico arguably the most competitive digital banking market anywhere right now.
Revolut launched its first bank outside Europe there in January. Plata (built by the ex-Tinkoff team, now a $3.1bn valuation) got its de novo license in February. Ualá and Klar bought theirs. Santander launched Openbank. Hey Banco spun out of Banregio.
Every region's neobank war produced a winner, and those winners have never fought each other on the same turf. Brazil's champion, Europe's most aggressive fintech, the Tinkoff diaspora, Argentina's Ualá. Mexico is the first market where all the playbooks collide.
Nubank enters that fight with 15 million customers, a deposit book, and breakeven economics.
What I wonder about is the next product. A bank license unlocks nómina, and payroll is how Mexican banks lock customers in.
Whoever wins payroll wins the market.
And Nubank's take on that could be fascinating.