Three Fronts, One Quarter: Nubank’s Push Into Abu Dhabi, the US, and Full Banking

Nubank Abu Dhabi is the third front in a global offensive that is transforming a São Paulo neobank into something that did not exist before: a full-service digital bank born in Latin America but operating across the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East.

David Vélez, the Colombian-born founder and CEO of Nubank, met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Tuesday to discuss investment opportunities and formalize the company’s entry into the Middle East. According to the Abu Dhabi Media Office, Nubank Abu Dhabi will be established as a headquarters at the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the emirate’s international financial center, in collaboration with Wio Bank — Abu Dhabi’s own digital banking platform. The ADGM presence is designed as a launchpad for expansion into Asia and the MENA region, targeting markets where digital banking penetration remains low and regulatory sandboxes welcome fintech entrants.

Three Fronts in One Quarter

The Abu Dhabi announcement is the latest in a sequence of moves that has compressed years of international strategy into a single quarter. In January 2026, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted Nubank conditional approval for a national banking charter — making it the first major Latin American-born digital bank authorized to operate in the American market. The charter, expected to be fully operational within 18 months, follows Nubank’s Nu Stadium naming rights deal with Inter Miami CF announced in March, which put the brand in front of the world’s most commercially valuable soccer audience.

In Brazil itself, Nubank is among four finalists bidding to acquire Banco Caixa Geral Brasil, the local subsidiary of Portugal’s state-owned Caixa Geral de Depósitos. The acquisition would give Nubank a full banking license — something Brazil’s central bank has required for the company to expand its product offering beyond its current hybrid structure as a payment institution. Binding offers are expected by early June, with regulatory approval potentially extending into 2027. The other finalists are Garantia Capital, MD Capital, and Sputnik LLC. Nubank also recently joined Febraban, the Brazilian banking federation, a signal that it is preparing to operate as a conventional bank alongside the incumbents it spent a decade disrupting.

The Scale Behind the Ambition

Nubank closed 2025 with 131 million customers across Brazil (112 million), Mexico (13 million), and Colombia (4 million), with additional presence in Uruguay, the United States (via investment products), and Germany. Assets under management exceed $78 billion. Full-year net income reached $2.82 billion, a 51% increase over 2024, and the company posted a 33% return on equity. In Brazil, 62% of adults now hold at least one Nubank product. The credit portfolio reached $32.7 billion, and deposits grew 29% to $41.9 billion.

The company’s AI-driven credit underwriting model, nuFormer, is being deployed across lending in Brazil and credit cards in Mexico, producing what management called the largest quarterly gain in credit card market share in ten quarters. Vélez has consistently argued that Nubank’s technology stack — built for Brazil’s 200 million consumers and some of the world’s most complex financial regulations — is portable to any market with similar characteristics: large unbanked populations, high smartphone penetration, and incumbent banks charging excessive fees.

Why Abu Dhabi, Why Now

The UAE has positioned itself as a fintech hub, with ADGM offering regulatory sandboxes, tax advantages, and a gateway to Southeast Asian and North African markets. For Nubank, the partnership with Wio Bank — a joint venture between Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth infrastructure and Etisalat — provides local regulatory expertise and distribution. The timing coincides with the broader Middle East push by Latin American companies: Oncoclínicas launched a joint venture in Saudi Arabia last year, Embraer signed defense MoUs with AMMROC and GAL, and Brazilian agribusiness is actively courting Gulf buyers amid the Hormuz disruption.

For a company that was founded in a São Paulo apartment in 2013 with a no-fee credit card, the trajectory from insurgent neobank to a six-country financial institution with a Crown Prince meeting and a US banking charter represents something new in Latin American corporate history. Whether Nubank can replicate in Abu Dhabi and New York what it built in São Paulo, Mexico City, and Bogotá will be the test of the next two years — and the answer will determine whether the company remains a regional champion or becomes a genuine global one.