Nubank, the largest digital bank in Latin America and one of the largest in the world, will establish a new headquarters at Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the Abu Dhabi Media Office confirmed on Tuesday, following a meeting between Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Nubank founder and CEO David Vélez.
The ADGM base will be set up in collaboration with leading Abu Dhabi investment, economic and financial institutions, including integrated digital banking platform Wio Bank. The meeting explored potential business opportunities in Abu Dhabi and the UAE and what the government described as prospects for global banking and financial institutions looking to expand into markets across Asia and MENA.
Founded in São Paulo in 2013 by Vélez, a Colombian-born former Sequoia Capital partner, alongside Cristina Junqueira and Edward Wible, Nubank has grown into the world's largest neobank by customer count.
The NYSE-listed company (NU) serves more than 100 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, the United States and Germany, manages assets exceeding $78 billion and carries a market capitalisation of approximately $70 billion. In Q4 2025, the company reported revenue of $4.9 billion and net income of $895 million.
The Abu Dhabi push comes at a moment of aggressive international expansion for Nubank. In January 2026, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved Nubank for a US national bank charter, opening the door to deposit accounts, credit cards, lending and digital asset custody in the world's largest consumer banking market. The ADGM headquarters signals that the company sees the Gulf as a strategic hub for reaching new markets across the Middle East and Asia rather than just Latin America and the US.
The meeting was attended on the Abu Dhabi side by Jassem Al Zaabi, Chairman of the Department of Finance, Ahmed Jasem Al Zaabi, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, Saif Saeed Ghobash, Secretary-General of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, and Badr Saleem Sultan Al-Olama, Director-General of Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO). From Nubank, Roberto Campos Neto, the former governor of Brazil's central bank who joined Nubank as Vice-Chairman and Global Head of Public Policy earlier this year, and CFO Guilherme Lago attended alongside Vélez.
The seniority of the Abu Dhabi delegation and the presence of both the Department of Finance and ADIO suggest this is being treated as a strategic economic development priority rather than a routine corporate relocation.
The UAE has been working to attract global financial technology platforms to its jurisdiction, with Revolut receiving in-principle approval for UAE payments licences from the Central Bank last year and a growing cohort of BaaS and payments infrastructure companies building out of ADGM and the wider UAE.
The involvement of Wio Bank, the digital banking platform backed by ADQ, Abu Dhabi's sovereign holding company, and Etisalat, points to a possible partnership model rather than a standalone licensing arrangement.
Nubank's choice of Abu Dhabi is notable given that Revolut, the other global neobank entering the UAE, is building its regional presence out of Dubai. The two largest digital banks in the world by customer count, Nubank at over 100 million and Revolut at over 60 million, are arriving in the UAE simultaneously but choosing different emirates.
