Stunned by the mountain of documents and fees required when opening his bank account in Brazil in 2011, David Vélez, a Colombian entrepreneur, spotted an opportunity. Two years later, he launched Nubank, a digital bank with no management fees.
Since then, the Brazilian start-up has experienced a meteoric rise: in just ten years, it has won over 80 million customers, becoming the most popular digital bank in the world in 2021. It has since been overtaken by WeBank, a subsidiary of the giant Chinese Tencent and its 300 million customers.
Nubank’s success illustrates the dynamism of fintech Brazilian: between 2013 and 2023, according to data from the Distrito innovation platform, nearly 1,931 financial start-ups were born in the country, now their first market in Latin America and the eighth most important in the world. Among these, eight are unicorns: companies valued at more than 1 billion dollars (around 942 million euros).
“A fertile ecosystem”
How to explain such success? “Brazil has all the factors for fintech to take off”, analyzes Ricardo Joshua, CEO of Pismo, a unicorn that specializes in storing banking data in the cloud. Besides “a huge market” (216 million inhabitants) and the ” human capital “ of Brazil, he welcomes the policies of the Central Bank: “They have favored the construction of a fertile ecosystem for financial start-ups. »
In 2013, the Central Bank adopted a law aimed at encouraging the entry of new competitors into the payments sector, then dominated by five major banks: Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, Caixa Economica, Itau and Santander. “This law has made the market more accessible, easier and simple for new entrants”explains David Perez, president of the ABFintechs association, which represents more than 700 fintechs in Brazil. “ More than 300 companies have emerged in the space of a few years. »
Seven years later, faced with the generalization of digital transactions during the pandemic, the Central Bank launched PIX, a free and instant payment system to promote the financial inclusion of the population. “This encouraged the massive banking of businesses and individuals”, notes Mr. Perez. According to Central Bank data, between February 2020 and December 2021, more than 16.6 million people opened an account at a financial institution.
18% of the population does not have a bank account
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