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Hassan Shittu
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The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has conditionally approved Nubank to establish a national bank, which possibly preconditions the establishment of regulated crypto custody services in the country.
The grant, which came 121 days after the company filed its application on Sept. 30, 2025, permits the company to enter the bank organization phase.
Nubank fulfilled the capitalization, governance, and supervisory conditions provided by the OCC in this period and also obtained independent authorizations as an independent operational entity with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve.
The regulators have provided the company with a time limit of 12 months to completely capitalize the institution and 18 months to launch the bank.
Nubank’s U.S. Expansion Targets Full Banking and Crypto Services
Upon full approval, the charter would allow Nubank to be a federally regulated national bank operating under the name Nubank, N.A., providing deposit accounts, credit card products, lending products, and custody of digital assets directly to customers in the United States.
It is also worth noting that it is possible to offer crypto custody on a federal banking platform, with most crypto offerings in the U.S. continuing to be based on the existing hodgepodge of state licenses or collaborations with existing banks.
In contrast to trust charters, which typically limit companies from collecting deposits or making loans, the Nubank national bank charter would allow it to provide a complete range of consumer banking products on top of digital asset custody.
That would make the fintech one of the first major, consumer-oriented digital banks to offer traditional banking and crypto services on the same federal license.
The approval was characterized as an extension of the overall strategy of the founder and CEO of Nubank, David Vélez, to show that a digital-first banking model can grow globally even in a regulated setting.
The U.S. entity will be led by Nubank co-founder Cristina Junqueira, who has relocated to the United States, with former Central Bank of Brazil president Roberto Campos Neto serving as board chairman.
The company was established in 2013 and is based in São Paulo. It has evolved to be one of the largest digital financial services providers in the world, with a customer base of over 127 million customers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.
It is the biggest privately held financial organization in Brazil in terms of the number of customers, as it has been listed publicly on the New York Stock Exchange since 2021 with the ticker NU.
The firm has reported record-holding-level revenue of $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2025, up 39% year over year.
As Regulators Move In, Nubank Moves Deeper Into Crypto
Nubank has been gradually diversifying into digital properties in recent years.
As of 2022, it collaborated with Paxos to allow customers to purchase, sell, and store cryptocurrencies within its application and announced plans to test dollar-pegged stablecoin payments linked to credit cards.
Since that time, its crypto product has expanded into dozens of tokens, on-chain transfers to external wallets, on-app swapping, and yield support on stablecoins.
By August 2025, the company said it had over 6.6 million crypto users, the majority of whom are millennials or Gen Z, and that crypto activity was now an essential part of engagement in its ecosystem.
The OCC license comes as part of a larger trend in Washington to take increasing amounts of digital asset activity under the federal banking perimeter.
In December, the regulator granted conditional approval to several crypto-native firms, including Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, to operate as national trust banks focused on custody and fiduciary services.
More applications have followed in early 2026, including from Nomura-backed Laser Digital and Trump-linked World Liberty Financial. Revolut has also signaled plans to pursue a U.S. banking license after abandoning an acquisition strategy.
