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David Velez
David Velez NU
Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Nu Holdings Ltd. (Nubank)
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David Velez @nubank Colombia Fintechs

📅 Sep 22, 2026 HENRY ZIMMERMANN 8 MIN 16 VIEWS 22 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS

What David Velez said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

David Velez discussed Colombia's fintech progress, highlighting Bre-B's success with over 100 million keys, surpassing Brazil's Pix in penetration, though 75% of transactions remain cash-based. He argued for reducing cash to 1% to cut visible infrastructure costs and invisible costs from informality and loan sharking. Velez criticized Open Finance decree timelines of 180 or 170 months as unfeasible, urging faster adoption. He emphasized AI's potential to democratize financial knowledge, currently held by 1% of the population, and to put a banker in everyone's pocket. Velez recounted Nu's growth from 1 million customers in 2 years to 140 million in Latin America, and announced expansion from 3 to 40 countries, including entering the US, which represents 50% of the global financial system, and launching a stablecoin wallet in 35 countries. He framed this as refounding the company.

Key takeaways

  1. Bre-B has over 100 million keys and higher penetration than Brazil's Pix, but 75% of Colombia's transactions are still cash.
  2. Velez called Open Finance decree timelines of 180 or 170 months unfeasible, urging Colombia to adopt now.
  3. Nu plans to expand from 3 to 40 countries, entering the US, which is 50% of the global financial system.
  4. Nu launched a stablecoin wallet in 35 countries to accelerate growth.
  5. Nu grew from 1 million customers in 2 years to 140 million in Latin America.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
100 million keys in Bre-B system metric 0:00
75% of Colombia's transactions still in cash metric 0:00
1% target for cash transactions in Colombia guidance 1:11
180 months, 170 months timelines in Open Finance decree timeline 1:38
1% of population with financial knowledge metric 2:46
1 million customers reached in 2 years metric 5:18
140 million customers in Latin America metric 5:18
3 to 40 countries expansion of Nu's operations commitment 5:49
50% of global financial system in US metric 5:49
35 countries launch of stablecoin wallet commitment 5:49

Chapters

  1. 0:00Bre-B success and cash challenge
  2. 0:36Visible and invisible costs of cash
  3. 1:38Open Finance decree timelines
  4. 2:17AI democratizing financial knowledge
  5. 4:13Nu's global expansion announcement
  6. 4:30Nu's growth history and thesis
  7. 5:49Expansion to 40 countries and US

Questions asked in this interview

1
  1. 4:23What can the millions of your customers expect from this new era of...?
David Velez 0:00 ↗
win that game. I think the first part that has been a success has really been the digitization of payments with Bre-B, where Bre-B has performed better than planned. In fact, it's beating, for example, Brazil's Pix — penetration is higher, with more than 100 million keys in the system, and adoption is working the way we wanted it to work. There's still a long way to go, because 75% of transactions in Colombia are still in cash, and that cash cost is both visible and invisible.
The visible cost is the cost that all consumers are paying today to maintain an infrastructure that is very expensive. The way I sometimes put it is that many consumers basically need infrastructures of bank branches and agencies. So almost all consumers are as if they were paying rent on an apartment they don't use. Many people don't realize they're paying for that infrastructure. So once the system is digitized, there is a system efficiency that can be passed on to the end consumer through lower commissions and lower fees.
But then there is also an invisible cost from all the informality that arises from physical money, from the lack of access to credit that this can bring, and from a whole series of criminality that is generated once you have things like the 'gota a gota' (loan sharking), for example. So we're doing well with Bre-B, but we need to take that cash figure from 75% down to 1%, as seen in the more developed countries.
Second, Open Finance — a lot is being talked about here at LatFinTech about a decree that is good, but it talks about timelines of 180 months, 170 months, which is not feasible, not viable. Colombia has to be in that infrastructure now, in a context where technology is accelerating more and more. 3 months is too long, and that's why it's important to see the speed of adoption and for the whole system to really bet on Open Finance to bring more competition and so that the user can have more access, more information, and that also applies to credit.
And finally, artificial intelligence — I believe it is a horizontal technology, it will touch all industries and all people. In financial services it will play a very important role. One part of that, obviously, is the efficiency it can bring to any financial institution, large or small, in any industry. That efficiency can be reinvested in doing more with less or in lowering costs for the population for any service.
But perhaps the most interesting promise of artificial intelligence is — and this is how we think about it at Nu — if the mobile phone created the option of putting a bank in everyone's pocket, artificial intelligence gives the possibility of putting a bank and a banker in everyone's pocket. And that's what's interesting, because today, especially financial knowledge is knowledge that really only belongs to 1% of the population. The 1% of the population is the population that knows how to invest, knows which is the best loan, knows which are the most tax-efficient financial products.
The one who has more resources has more intelligence, and the fewer resources one has, the less access one has. And the promise of artificial intelligence is to democratize that intelligence for 100% of the population and allow everyone to optimize their financial life. If you stop to think about what that can mean, it is gigantic in terms of value creation for society and value creation for people.
So that multiplication of technologies — digital payments, open finance, artificial intelligence — is going to be a revolution. They are global technologies, they will be bet on in all countries. That's what we're betting on at Nu, because we believe these technologies will allow a newcomer to break into systems that are so difficult to compete in, and that has to be seen in Colombia too.
Before we start with this dynamic — we already told you — I can't leave you with the doubt. If you've been living under a rock, you most likely didn't hear about Nu's announcements in recent weeks, but it would seem to me...
Interviewer 4:23 ↗
You mentioned Nu's internationalization. What's coming? What can people expect? What can the millions of your customers expect from this new era of...?

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Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX
APA

Velez, D. (2026, September 22). David Velez @nubank Colombia Fintechs [Interview transcript]. HENRY ZIMMERMANN. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3044227/

MLA

David Velez. "David Velez @nubank Colombia Fintechs." HENRY ZIMMERMANN, 22 Sep. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3044227/.

BibTeX 
@misc{velez2026_3044227,
  author       = {David Velez},
  title        = {David Velez @nubank Colombia Fintechs},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, HENRY ZIMMERMANN. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {sep},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3044227/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}