Neobanks

As their customer base grows fast, fintechs across the region are looking to become banks in the full regulatory and economic sense.

This article appears in the September 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.

After nearly a decade of explosive growth, Brazil’s fintech industry has crossed a threshold that once looked unthinkable; a digital bank now counts more customers than any of the country’s storied private lenders.

According to recent data from the Central Bank of Brazil, nearly 60% of the nation’s adults now hold an account with Nubank, making it Brazil’s largest private financial institution by customer count, albeit still far from the largest by assets. Similarly, 55% of banked Brazilians primarily identify as customers of a digital bank or fintech, according to research organization Instituto Locomotiva.

“The fintech market has decidedly moved beyond access and into becoming the central piece of the Brazilian banking economy, also from the population’s perspective,” said Álvaro Machado Dias, associate director of Instituto Locomotiva.

The Brazilian experience reflects a broader shift across Latin America. Having secured a competitive customer base, the region’s fintechs are now seeking the licenses, deposits, and balance sheets that could allow them to become the banks they once set out to disrupt.

In Argentina, digital wallets have overtaken every other payment instrument, with 70% of consumers using them over the past six months compared with 52% for cash, according to Mastercard. Nu Mexico reaches roughly 15% of the adult population just seven years after entering the market, while Mercado Pago, the fintech arm of now-Montevideo-headquartered MercadoLibre Inc., now has 83 million monthly active users across eight countries, up 29% over the past year. 

The shift is also changing how consumers transact. Sixty-one percent of Brazilian and 47% of Mexican consumers used a mobile device for their latest retail purchase, according to PYMNTS Intelligence’s Global Digital Shopping Index.

Having crossed that threshold with customers, the fintechs are now moving to the next stage: becoming banks in the full regulatory and economic sense. Nubank agreed in July to acquire Banco Porto Real de Investimentos S/A, enabling it to obtain a Brazilian banking license, while its Mexican unit began operating as a bank last month, becoming the first Mexican popular financial society (SOFIPO) authorized to convert.

Mercado Pago is close behind, with its own application reportedly first in line at Mexico’s banking regulator and an ambition to build the country’s largest digital bank. Mexican fintech Plata secured its license in February, while Argentina’s Ualá Bank SAU already holds a full banking license at home and in Mexico and a financing company license in Colombia.

Why A Banking License?

The economics of the transition are straightforward. As fintechs scale, the limitations of lighter regulatory charters become increasingly binding. Nu Mexico’s SOFIPO status, for example, allows deposit insurance of just 25,000 UDIs (Mexico’s inflation-indexed units of accounts) per client; a full banking license raises that ceiling sixteenfold. Banks can also compete for payroll accounts, held by only about a third of Mexican adults and concentrated largely among four incumbent institutions.

Most important, a banking license gives fintechs access to the deposits that provide the cheapest funding for a growing loan book.

Nu Mexico already holds $5.9 billion in deposits, which makes the ability to gather and deploy them at scale an increasingly important side of its business.

“Once a digital bank holds the same license, follows the same rules, and funds itself the same way, it stops being essentially different from a traditional bank,” said Reginaldo Nogueira, national director of Brazil’s Ibmec business and economics school. “The difference shifts to technology, efficiency, and customer experience.”

Accompanying that strategic shift is a much larger investment commitment. Founder David Vélez paired Nubank’s Mexican license with a projected $4.2 billion investment in the country through 2030.

The fintechs’ current profile marks a striking reversal from where the industry began. A decade ago, they were outsiders challenging Latin America’s established banks to control the region’s customers, branches and balance sheets. Today, they have crossed the most important threshold on the customer side. The next step is to acquire the regulatory privileges and funding advantages that underpin the banking business itself.

Thomas Monteiro is a contributing writer based in Spain.

Revolut gets an OCC thumbs up to launch a US bank, but lending ambitions are another issue.

Technically, financial technology company Revolut is already a bank across several regions—it holds licenses in the U.K., France, Mexico and Australia.

Now, in the U.S. market, it is one step closer to bankhood.

The London-based startup announced Thursday that it has received conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank charter. The move would help the company grow its customer base from 80 million to 100 million by mid-2027.

It also exemplifies Revolut’s agility as a fintech compared to traditional banks, which typically take years to pull off similar expansion efforts.

“Legacy banks are working with legacy systems,” David Tirado, Revolut’s VP of Profitability and Global Business, told Global Finance in an interview last year. “Revolut, on the other hand, built our proprietary technology from the ground up with a global mindset. While competitors struggle to scale across different markets and regulatory landscapes, our systems were designed for this from day one.”

What Else Does Revolut Need?

Revolut still needs a green light from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve, as well as final sign-off from the OCC, before it can open the proposed bank.

Once fully approved, Revolut said it would offer U.S. customers loans, credit cards, FDIC-insured deposits, and access to stablecoins and cryptocurrencies.

In a prepared statement, Revolut founder and CEO Nik Storonsky said the conditional approval was “an important first step towards establishing the proposed Revolut Bank US,” adding that it gives the company “the foundation to build in the world’s largest financial market.”

The U.S. bid follows Revolut’s expansion across Latin America, where the company recently launched a bank in Mexico and is pursuing licenses in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Argentina. This year, Revolut has also obtained banking licenses in France, Australia and the U.K., a payments license in the United Arab Emirates, and is seeking a banking license in South Africa.

The company claims to add roughly 1 million customers every 17 days.

What About Lending?

Whether Revolut can become a customer’s primary financial institution without being a major loan underwriter remains to be seen. Revolut’s consumer lending segment remains small relative to its tens of billions in customer deposits. Still, it’s worth noting that the so-called neobank’s loan book, as of March, is up 120% year over year at $2.9 billion.

Felipe Peñacoba Martinez, CEO of Getnet Platforms Payments Hub and former CIO at Revolut Bank (EU), told Global Finance in June: “Revolut is aware this takes time, and they’re going slower than in other areas.”

Ultimately, the central question facing the industry is whether fintechs like Revolut can scale core banking products faster than traditional incumbents can modernize their digital ecosystems.

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com