Brazilian Digital Lender Nubank Set for One of 2021’s Biggest IPOs

Brazilian Digital Lender Nubank Set for One of 2021’s Biggest IPOs

When David Vélez tried to open an account in a Brazilian bank in 2012, it took him four months to win approval, not unusual in a country where high fees and bureaucracy are the norm in banking. When visiting the bank, he would leave his cellphone in a locker before passing through bulletproof doors as armed guards scrutinized him.

“You’re going through all that experience to then pay 15%-a-month interest rates and pay hundreds of fees,” he recounted at a CB Insights conference in New York in 2018. “How is it possible you’re doing that?”



The experience led to a kernel of an idea: There was room in Brazil, a country where five banks control nearly the entire market, for a new kind of bank. Nubank, the digital banking startup that the Colombian-born investor-turned-entrepreneur co-founded, is set to start trading this week on the New York Stock Exchange in one of the year’s largest initial public offerings.



From its beginnings in 2013 offering credit-card services, Nubank has expanded to serve 48 million customers, up from six million in 2018. Total revenue has topped $1 billion, nearly twice the $535 million last year. Nubank had been losing money until the first half of this year, when it posted a profit.