Nu, the Brazilian fintech behind Nubank and Latin America's largest digital bank, switched on US operations on September 10 and opened its app to American customers for the first time. Alongside the domestic launch, the company introduced Nu Global, a multi-currency account built on stablecoins rather than the correspondent-banking rails that typically move money across borders.
Multi-currency accounts aren't new — Wise and Revolut have offered versions of the same idea for years. What's different about Nu Global is the settlement layer underneath it. Instead of pooling customer funds across a network of local bank accounts in each supported currency, Nu Global converts deposits directly into USDC and EURC, meaning a transfer can settle on-chain in seconds rather than waiting on the multi-day clearing windows typical of correspondent banking. For a company entering a new country with no existing local banking infrastructure of its own, stablecoins function as a shortcut around building that infrastructure from scratch.
The scale behind the move is what makes it notable. Nu has spent more than a decade building a base of over 140 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, and its most recent quarter produced net income above $1 billion with return on equity topping 32%. Instead of growing into the US market slowly, the company is importing that balance sheet directly into an industry it pegs at roughly $1.2 trillion in annual retail banking revenue as of 2024, projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2029 — a market in which, Nu argues in its own launch announcement, US consumers pay an estimated $82 billion a year in fees.
The domestic product looks like a conventional neobank offering on the surface: a current account, a credit card with 1.5% unlimited cashback (rising to 2% under qualifying conditions) and Mastercard World Elite perks, and a savings feature paying up to 4.50% APY on balances up to $10,000 when paired with the card. Deposits sit at FDIC-insured Lead Bank while Nu works through the licensing process needed to operate as a chartered bank in its own right, a common workaround for fintechs entering the US market before they clear that bar.
Nu Global is the more unusual piece. It lets customers hold digital dollars in USDC, earning 3.50% variable APY, and euros in EURC at 2.20% APY, with fee-free transfers across more than 35 countries. The pitch is aimed squarely at the mechanics of cross-border money movement: Nu cites data showing more than 300 million people send roughly $800 billion in remittances every year and lose about 6% of it to fees and exchange-rate spreads along the way. Settling those transfers in stablecoins instead of through multiple correspondent banks is meant to collapse both the cost and the delay.
Layered on top, Nu Global also gives users the ability to hold and trade a curated selection of Bitcoin and Ethereum directly alongside their cash balances, all inside the same app used for everyday spending. That puts a bank with 140 million existing customers in the position of being a default on-ramp into crypto for anyone who opens a Nu Global account, without those users ever needing to touch a standalone exchange.
Related: Coinbase Partners With Moov to Bring Stablecoins to 1,000+ Banks
It also puts Nu in company with a growing list of banks treating stablecoins as core infrastructure rather than a side experiment. Standard Chartered recently became the first bank to distribute a central-bank-linked stablecoin in Hong Kong, while JPMorgan Chase has been staffing up a retail digital-assets team aimed at its 80 million account holders. Stablecoins overall have become concentrated fast: USDT and USDC alone now account for 85% of a stablecoin market worth over $300 billion, which is exactly the liquidity pool Nu Global is tapping into rather than trying to compete with.
Whether Nu Global actually bends remittance costs down at scale will depend on adoption outside its existing Latin American user base, where trust in the brand is already established. In the US, Nu is a newcomer competing against Chime, Cash App and a wave of other neobanks that have already spent years building distribution. The stablecoin wrapper is the differentiator it's betting will matter.
