Nubank opened US deposit, card and remittance products on Sept. 10, 2026 through FDIC-insured partner Lead Bank, led by a 3.50% savings yield, a no-fee card with 1.5% cashback and free transfers to Latin America. The launch puts Nubank's brand and remittance corridors against US digital challengers Chime and SoFi while its own national bank charter works through Federal Reserve and FDIC review.
Nubank will begin selling US deposit, card and remittance products on Thursday through FDIC-insured partner Lead Bank, offering a 3.50% yield on savings, a no-fee credit card with 1.5% cashback and free international transfers, the Brazilian digital lender said in a securities filing.
"We are going to build the same thing here that we built in Brazil, but we know it will take time," Cristina Junqueira, Nubank co-founder and chief executive of the US business, said at a launch event in Miami. Chief Executive David Velez told Reuters earlier this week that the US operation will take "a number of years" to become profitable, noting Nubank needed eight years to reach profitability in Brazil.
The 3.50% yield sits above the national average savings rate and lands in the same band as US digital challengers that have spent three years competing for deposits. Nubank is not disclosing a minimum balance, monthly fee or promotional expiry for the rate, and the yield is set by Lead Bank, not Nubank, because deposits sit on the partner bank's balance sheet. The card carries no annual fee and no foreign transaction fee, with 1.5% cashback on all purchases — a flat rate that matches the entry tier at Chime and sits below the 2% flat rate offered by the SoFi card and the 2% to 5% rotating categories at Discover.
Remittances are the third leg and the one most directly aimed at a specific customer. Nubank says transfers to Mexico, Colombia and Brazil will carry no fee, undercutting the roughly 6.2% average cost of sending $200 from the US to Latin America that the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide database last recorded for the corridor. Nubank already operates in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, giving it an existing payout network on the receiving end — the piece of the business that is hardest for a US-only challenger to replicate.
Everything Nubank is launching this week runs on someone else's banking license. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved Nubank's national bank charter in January, and the application is now with the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Junqueira said she expects Nubank's own bank to begin operating next year. Until then, Lead Bank holds the deposits and issues the card.
That structure caps what Nubank can earn. In a partner-bank arrangement, the partner typically keeps a share of the spread between what deposits earn and what the bank earns deploying them, and the fintech absorbs marketing and servicing costs. Nubank has not disclosed the economics of the Lead Bank agreement, including any revenue share or the deposit volume it expects to gather in year one. The company also has not disclosed a customer acquisition cost target for the US, a figure that matters because the 3.50% yield is effectively a customer acquisition expense paid monthly rather than upfront.
The charter matters beyond economics. A national bank charter would let Nubank hold deposits directly, launch lending products without a partner intermediary and expand into the products Velez has flagged as future additions: investments, insurance, small business accounts and digital asset trading, including bitcoin and ether. Each of those requires either a charter or a new partner agreement, and each carries a longer regulatory review than a deposit account.
Nubank's initial target is young US customers who already bank on a phone and the US Hispanic population, which is more familiar with a brand that has 100 million-plus customers across Latin America. That is a narrower beachhead than the "everyone with a checking account" pitch that Chime, SoFi and Varo have used, and it is a deliberate one: Nubank's advantage is a brand that travels on remittance corridors, not a branch network it does not have.
Deposit pricing is the clearest signal of how badly a challenger wants funding. Nubank's 3.50% is a rate it does not control and cannot cut unilaterally while Lead Bank sets the terms — which means the yield is a marketing promise with a partner's balance sheet behind it. If the Fed cuts rates, that yield falls with the market, and the headline number that drove sign-ups disappears. Nubank has not said whether it will guarantee the rate for a fixed period.
For incumbents, the immediate exposure is at the margin. A 3.50% yield does not threaten the deposit bases of JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America, where most balances sit in transaction accounts paying near zero. It does pressure the cohort of digital-first deposit gatherers — Chime, SoFi, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Ally Financial — that have built their growth on rate-sensitive savers who move money for 50 basis points. Nubank's free remittances add a second front, aimed at the cross-border households that Western Union and Remitly serve.
The equity market read the launch as modestly positive. Nubank shares rose 1.6% on the announcement, though the stock is down 9% so far this year. The company's total net profit crossed $1 billion in the second quarter and beat estimates, giving it the balance sheet to fund a multi-year US build without raising capital — the constraint that has forced smaller challengers to slow deposit growth when funding costs rise.
What to watch next is the Fed and FDIC approval timeline, which Junqueira has pegged to operations starting next year, and the first disclosed US deposit balances. Until those numbers appear, the 3.50% is a promise about intent rather than evidence of traction. Nubank has said organic growth is the main US strategy, with Velez adding that the company is watching acquisition opportunities — a signal that if the build is slower than planned, the entry price for US customers may turn out to be a purchase rather than a product.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Rates, product terms and regulatory timelines cited are as reported on Sept. 10, 2026; readers should verify current terms with Nubank, Lead Bank and the relevant regulators before acting.
