Catenaa, Thursday, February 05, 2026- Brazil’s Nubank has received conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national bank, positioning the company to potentially offer regulated crypto custody services in the United States.
The approval, issued 121 days after Nubank filed its application on September 30, 2025, allows the firm to begin the bank organization phase.
The company met capitalization, governance, and supervisory requirements set by the OCC and obtained independent authorizations from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve.
Regulators have set a 12-month window for full capitalization and 18 months to launch the bank.
Once fully operational, Nubank, N.A. would operate as a federally regulated national bank, providing deposit accounts, credit cards, lending products, and digital asset custody.
This would make Nubank one of the first consumer-oriented digital banks to combine traditional banking and crypto services under a single federal license.
The US entity will be led by Nubank co-founder Cristina Junqueira, with former Central Bank of Brazil president Roberto Campos Neto serving as board chairman.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in São Paulo, Nubank serves over 127 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia and is publicly traded on the NYSE under ticker NU. The company reported $4.2 billion in revenue in Q3 2025, up 39% from the prior year.
Nubank has expanded its crypto offerings since 2022, including trading, on-chain transfers, stablecoin yield, and token swapping, reaching 6.6 million crypto users by August 2025.
The move aligns with a broader U.S. trend of bringing digital asset activity under federal banking oversight, following similar approvals for Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos.
