A decade ago, Nubank was a credit card start-up operating out of São Paulo. Today, at $16.3 billion in retail banking revenue (2025), it has surpassed HSBC and Standard Chartered’s global retail banking businesses and is on track to overtake Itaú Unibanco in Brazil in 2026 and Citigroup by 2027. What is emerging is not just rapid growth, but the early stages of a long-term strategy to build a global retail banking franchise.