They say you should never talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you. Traveling in emerging market countries will quickly make you see how important that rule becomes when negotiating prices. Similarly, when you analyze a firm that’s providing financial services in emerging markets, you need to remove your ethnocentric goggles and try to understand what’s happening in a world that’s different from the one you’re accustomed to.
Brazilian fintech Nu Holdings (NU) has been raised by our readers numerous times because it’s a compelling thesis that’s easy to digest. The Latin American fintech opportunity is massive – perhaps in the range of several hundred billion dollars – and the leader in this space right now appears to be the largest digital bank on the planet – Nubank. As we discovered with other large fintechs like SoFi, it’s a chore to figure out where the revenues come from.
How Does Nubank Make Money?
Open the latest earnings deck from Nubank and see if you can figure out how they’re making money. Mention is made of insurance products, credit cards, personal loans, investment products, even crypto, but nowhere in the deck can we quickly glean how this company makes money. After an hour of probing aro