Issue #145: Nubank Secures US Charter Green Light, PicPay's IPO Breaks Brazil's Four-Year Drought, And Mastercard’s Agentic Payments Move in Australia
The week's biggest fintech moves, broken down and delivered to your inbox ✉️
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🏦 Nubank Gets Conditional OCC Approval for US National Bank Charter, Banking Dive
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Nu Holdings, the $50B+ parent of Brazil’s Nubank, received conditional approval from the OCC on January 29 to establish a US national bank. The application took just 121 days—in line with the OCC’s stated 120-day timeline. Nubank plans to launch deposit accounts, credit cards, lending, and digital asset custody, with hubs in Miami, San Francisco, Northern Virginia, and the Research Triangle.
🥡 Takeaway: The LatAm neobank’s entry into the US is officially on. And the regulators are rolling out the welcome mat.
Let’s talk about that 121 days to conditional approval. The OCC has been promising to streamline the charter process, and Nubank just proved they meant it. It seems things are changing in the US. Yes, there is a long way to go before they swing the doors open, but this is a fast start to their US expansion goals.
Nubank isn’t messing around with the US launch either. They’re not starting with one city—they’re building hubs in four major markets: Miami (a natural LatAm gateway), San Francisco (deep tech and product talent), Northern Virginia and the North Carolina research triangle (close to the regulatory centre of gravity). That’s a real footprint from day one.
The digital asset custody piece is interesting. Nubank already offers crypto trading to its 127 million customers in Brazil. Now they’re bringing that capability to the US market with a full banking license behind it. That’s a different proposition than the crypto-native custodians. As a side note, this is getting close to feeling like table stakes in most markets.
For Revolut, Mercury, and every other neobank eyeing US charters, Nubank just showed that the path may have become a tad easier.
🚀 PicPay IPO Breaks Brazil’s Four-Year Drought, Prices at Top of Range, Finextra
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Brazilian digital bank PicPay debuted on Nasdaq on January 29, raising $434 million at $19 per share. The top of its range. The IPO valued the company at $2.6 billion and was 10x oversubscribed with demand exceeding $4.5 billion. It’s the first Brazilian company to go public in New York in over four years.
🥡 Takeaway: Two solid opening for fintech IPOs in two weeks. The fintech IPO window just swung wide open. And the market seem to be hungry.
12x oversubscribed. Let that sink in. Investors were fighting to get into this deal. PicPay priced at the top of the range and still left massive demand on the table.
What’s changed? PicPay came to market profitable. Net income of R$270 million in the first nine months of 2025, nearly double the prior year. The 2021 IPO attempt failed because the market wanted growth at any cost. The 2026 market wants growth AND profitability. PicPay delivered both.
Side note, this breaks a four-year drought for Brazilian companies listing in New York. A poll of institutional investors by UBS suggests 10+ Brazilian IPOs in 2026. If PicPay’s aftermarket performance holds, the floodgates could be wide open.
For the LatAm fintech ecosystem: this is validation. Nubank proved the model. PicPay proved the exit path still works. The next generation of Brazilian fintechs now has a clear roadmap to public markets.
💳 Mastercard Completes Australia’s First Authenticated Agentic Transactions, Mastercard
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Mastercard announced on January 28 that it has completed Australia’s first authenticated agentic transactions using Agent Pay, with Commonwealth Bank and Westpac cards. The technology allows AI agents to search, find, and purchase items on behalf of consumers, with biometric authentication (Face ID or fingerprint) required before any transaction is completed.
🥡 Takeaway: Agentic commerce just went from PowerPoint to production. And Australia is the testing ground.
Here’s how it works: you tell an AI agent to buy concert tickets when they drop below a certain price, or book flights to Tokyo when they hit your budget. The agent monitors, finds the deal, and executes—but only after you authenticate with biometrics. It’s autonomous shopping with a human kill switch.
The CBA and Westpac integration is clever. These aren’t crypto-native startups experimenting on the fringe—they’re Australia’s largest banks putting real customer cards behind agentic transactions. That’s mainstream adoption, not a pilot.
What caught my eye: pending agentic transactions will show up in your banking app. You’ll see what your AI agents are planning to buy before they buy it. That transparency layer is crucial for trust.
The bigger question: who owns the customer relationship when an AI agent is doing the shopping? This is still a massive TBD and seemingly changes every week (have you seen Clawdbot/Moltbot/OpenClaw?!?). Mastercard is betting they can be the trust layer between consumers, agents, and merchants. Smart positioning. If agentic commerce takes off (and the McKinsey projections say $3-5 trillion globally by 2030), being the authentication layer isn’t a bad place to be.
IMHO, this is THE payments theme to watch in 2026.
💳 Dakota Launches Stablecoin Infrastructure Platform for Businesses, American Banker
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Dakota, the neobank founded by former Coinbase executive Ryan Bozarth, announced on January 29 its evolution into a stablecoin infrastructure platform. The company now offers APIs that let fintechs and enterprises embed regulated, programmable global money movement. Dakota has processed over $100 million in stablecoin supply and is acquiring EMI and crypto asset service provider licenses in Europe.
🥡 Takeaway: This is the stablecoin infrastructure story nobody’s talking about. While everyone debates whether PayPal or Circle will win the stablecoin wars, Dakota is betting that most companies don’t want to become stablecoin issuers—they just want the pipes.
This a smart move. Running a neobank is brutally competitive. Running the infrastructure that powers the next generation of neobanks? That’s a much better business. Think Plaid, but for stablecoins.
Bozarth’s quote nails it: “Most companies don’t want to become banks or payments networks. They want reliable, regulated primitives that let them move money inside their own products.”
The Bridge acquisition by Stripe validated this thesis at scale. Dakota is positioning as the API layer for everyone who can’t afford a $1.1B acquisition. If stablecoin-powered payments are the future (and the numbers say they are—$9 trillion processed in 2025), someone needs to provide the plumbing. This, combined with growing regulatory certainty around stablecoins, means that in 2026 we’ll likely see more “stablecoin infrastructure” pivots.
🏦 Revolut Launches Full Banking Operations in Mexico, Its First Bank Outside Europe, Yahoo Finance
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Revolut announced on January 27 the launch of full banking operations in Mexico—its first banking entity outside Europe. They’ve capitalised the operation with over $100 million (more than double the regulatory minimum) and received promising credit ratings from HR Ratings (HR AAA) and S&P (mxA+). Services include savings accounts with interest, multi-currency holdings, and instant global transfers.
🥡 Takeaway: This is Revolut planting its flag in one of the most important markets in LATAM. And they’re not tiptoeing in—they’re coming with $100M in capital and the playbook they perfected in Europe.
The credit ratings are worth noting. HR AAA and mxA+ for a neobank in its first week of operations? That’s the benefit of being backed by a $75B parent with a track record.
For US market watchers, the contrast is instructive: Revolut has moved away from the “buy a bank” path in the US and is instead pursuing a direct OCC license. Mexico looks like the proving ground for a repeatable model: build a bank from scratch in a new market, then replicate. Easier said than done, and also a massive pendulum swing from the neobank expansion playbooks of days gone by.
💰 Rogo Raises $75M to Unify CFO Workflows with AI, Rogo
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Rogo, an AI platform for CFO workflows, raised $75 million on January 29. The company builds AI copilots that help finance teams with FP&A, reporting, and analysis tasks.
🥡 Takeaway: The office of the CFO is getting its AI moment. We’ve seen this pattern play out in sales (Gong, Clari), engineering (GitHub Copilot, Cursor), and legal (Harvey). Now it’s finance’s turn.
The opportunity is massive. Most finance teams still live in spreadsheets and legacy ERP systems. The data exists; the intelligence layer doesn’t. Rogo is betting they can be the AI copilot (or “thought partner,” as they put it) that sits on top of all that financial data. It feels like a solid bet.
💰 Pace Raises $10M to Bring Agentic AI to Insurance Operations, Pace
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Pace, an AI operations platform for insurers, raised $10 million led by Sequoia Capital, with Bryan Schreier and Lauren Reeder joining the board. The company transforms Standard Operating Procedures into “Agent Operating Procedures” that let AI agents handle insurance back-office work end-to-end. Pace already partners with carriers including Prudential and tech-forward brokers like Newfront.
🥡 Takeaway: Here’s a stat that should make every insurtech founder sit up: insurers spend nearly $70 billion annually on BPOs for back-office operations. Across financial services? $400 billion—roughly the size of the entire enterprise software market.
Pace is betting that work shifts from offshore outsourcing to agentic AI. Their early numbers are impressive: tens of thousands of tasks completed in production with 1/100th the workforce of traditional BPOs. If that scales, the unit economics are absurd.
Sequoia leading at $10M also suggests they’re going deep into fintech x AI — if you were paying attention, they also led Rogo’s round. When one of the most storied franchises in VC is laying bets in a segment it’s worth taking notes. Insurance back office x AI and office of the CFO investments announced in the same week… notes taken.
🎧 The Wartime CEO: Vlad Tenev of Robinhood, Long Strange Trip
Brian Halligan sits down with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev for a masterclass in leading through crisis. They go deep on GameStop (what it’s actually like to get a 5am call saying you need to raise $3 billion by end of day), the 2022 market crash that saw Robinhood’s stock drop 90%, and how to maintain composure when everyone around you is panicking. Vlad’s take on “wartime vs. peacetime” CEO mindset is gold—his argument that wartime should be your default, not the exception. The bit about 10-year vision planning and working backwards from your ultimate ambition is worth the listen alone.
🎧 How Brex Signed a $5.15B Deal in ~40 Days, Sorcery
Pedro Franceschi gives the blow-by-blow on how the Capital One acquisition came together in just 40 days—from first serious meeting to signed definitive agreement. He’s refreshingly candid about why they chose acquisition over IPO, what it’s like to pitch a deal to your board when you never planned to sell, and why the last two and a half years of “war mode” made this exit feel like validation rather than defeat. For any founder wondering what a strategic exit actually looks like from the inside, this is a fantastic listen.
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This piece really made me thnk about the impressive speed of Nubank's approval, especially after reading your deep dive into the Cash App's growth machine. I wonder if this 121-day timeline signals a new era of regulatory flexibility for innovative fintechs like them, or if it's more of an outlier?
Australia was also early to air taxis; Uber started trials in 2019 outside of Melbourne but it didn't go anywhere. AU is always early to the party. It will be interesting to see who will develop that super smooth UI/UX in agentic commerce that becomes the biggest unlock to owning the customer relationship.
The Brex deal will have its ripple effects...we saw the Visa stock wobble the last week/month...perhaps it's a response to the a big portfolio moving onto its own proprietary network .