IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Hey, fintech fam 💜

Time is flying—and while it always does, it’s moving especially fast as we’re deep in build mode, bringing our upcoming content and events to life. My mom used to say it’s better to be busy than bored… and I clearly took that to heart 😅

Here’s what’s coming down the pipeline:

• The FEMMY Awards, kicking off Women’s History Month, and onboarding new members to The Academy of Fintech

• Fintech Is Femme at Fintech Meetup, bringing back the Fintech Penthouse Series and live recordings of the Humans of Fintech podcast (want to win free tickets? Click here)

• Building the new New York Fintech Week 2026 conference April 28-30

And that’s just the beginning—more to come soon.

Alright, let’s get into the news ✨

SPONSORED BY GEORGETOWN McDONOUGH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS 

Last week, I hosted a virtual event with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business that felt less like a panel and more like a real-time business class for the future of fintech.

The speakers set the tone: Sandra Waliczek (World Economic Forum), Jocelyn Byrne Houle (Capital One Ventures, former Securiti.ai exec), and Karen Snow (former Nasdaq Global Head of Listings, now CEO of Rose & Co. Capital) — all Georgetown alumni now operating at the center of global finance.

The lessons were clear:

1. Regulation is a competitive advantage if you know how to navigate it. 

2. AI fails when organizations aren’t built to support it. Leadership is key. 

3. And durable leaders design careers for volatility, not hype.

That intersection of technology, global policy, regulation, and capital markets is exactly where fintech is headed — and exactly what the Georgetown MBA is designed around.

If you’re a founder, operator, or leader who wants to:

• Navigate AI, globalization, and regulation with confidence

• Build products — and a career — that stand the test of time

• Use fintech as a force for both economic inclusion and long-term growth

It’s worth taking a closer look at the Georgetown University McDonough MBA.

#TRENDING

What’s Up In Fintech

Every Thursday, I break down the fintech stories that matter most—grounded in my reporting, interviews with industry leaders, and what I’m seeing unfold across the industry.

#1 Nubank Is One Step Closer to a U.S. Bank Charter — And CEO Cristina Junqueira Is Playing the Long Game

Brazilian fintech giant Nubank just crossed a major threshold in its long-game U.S. expansion.

Last week, Nu received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to form a de novo national bank, Nubank — a milestone that puts the company on a path toward operating as a federally regulated U.S. bank offering deposits, credit cards, lending, and digital asset custody.

Founded in 2013, the company already serves more than 127 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

Speaking at Bloomberg’s Women, Money & Power event in London, co-founder and CEO of the emerging US business, Cristina Junqueira, was clear that the decision to pursue a U.S. bank charter is deliberate — and intentionally slow.

“This is, of course, a long-term process,” Junqueira told Bloomberg in an interview published in October 2025. “Regulatory filings do take their time, and it’s a process that we take very seriously.”

Nu first applied for the charter in September 2025, fully aware that U.S. approval requires years of strict supervisory conditions, capitalization commitments, and governance oversight — plus parallel sign-off from the FDIC and the Federal Reserve. 

The company has now entered the OCC’s bank organization phase, and regulators require the bank to be fully capitalized within 12 months and operational within 18 months.

Why It Matters

Unlike fintechs that have historically tried to scale first and deal with regulation later, Nubank has consistently taken the opposite approach.

“We were never the type of company trying to avoid regulation,” Junqueira said. “We’ve always embraced it.”

That posture has already paid off elsewhere. Nubank operates as a fully regulated financial institution in Brazil, is progressing through bank authorization in Mexico, and now sees the U.S. as its fourth major regulatory market.

Junqueira has relocated to Miami to oversee the effort and will serve as CEO of the U.S. bank. Former Central Bank of Brazil president Roberto Campos Neto will chair the board.

The U.S. opportunity itself is obvious. As Junqueira put it, “Texas alone has a larger GDP than Brazil.” But Nubank isn’t walking away from its core markets.

“Our priority continues to be Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia,” she said, noting that even in Brazil — where Nubank serves more than 60% of the adult population — there is still significant room to deepen customer relationships and expand product usage.

So why the U.S., now?

Early customers will likely be Nubank users already living and spending in the U.S. — hundreds of thousands, according to Junqueira, who are familiar with the brand and willing to adopt early.

“We already have hundreds of thousands of Nubank customers living and working in the United States,” Junqueira said. “We have more than four to five million customers downloading the app and making purchases regularly in the U.S., coming from Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.” 

There is an expectation that a fair number of those customers will be early adopters. But Junqueira is explicit that the longer-term ambition goes beyond the Latin American diaspora.

“The pain points we solve — convenience, transparency, no fees — those are fairly common,” she said. “That has the possibility of resonating with a much wider American audience.”

If fully approved, Nubank would become one of the few non-U.S.-founded fintechs to successfully navigate the American bank charter process.

For fintech leaders watching closely, the lesson isn’t that Nubank is “coming for U.S. banks.” It’s that the next phase of global fintech expansion will be defined less by speed — and more by who’s willing to earn legitimacy the hard way and play the long game.

#2 What Michael Lewis Really Thinks About This Market Moment

On Wednesday, SoFi hosted a live recording of The Important Part, featuring Liz Thomas (SoFi’s Head of Investment Strategy), Tom Lee (Managing Partner and Head of Research at Fundstrat), and Michael Lewis — the New York Times bestselling author behind The Big Short, Moneyball, The Blind Side, and Liar’s Poker, whose work has become a kind of cultural lie detector for finance when the stories get too clean.

The hour-long conversation ranged from AI and markets to crypto, the Fed, and prediction markets — but the throughline for fintech leaders was sharper:

When systems break, it’s rarely because people didn’t have data. It’s because incentives rewarded denial.

“When people are giving you advice and people are doing things… think about what are their incentives like?” Lewis said. “Why are they saying what they’re saying? What is their book? Are they talking their book?”

That’s not just media literacy. It’s product strategy. It’s risk management. It’s governance.

Tom Lee: “When We Say It’s a Bubble… It Usually Isn’t Yet”

Lee opened with a line every macro person in the room recognized:

“Bull markets don’t die of old age. They get killed by the Fed.”

But his most useful AI-market insight wasn’t a victory lap about productivity — it was a warning about timing and crowd psychology. When the room started circling the “AI bubble” conversation, Lee offered a contrarian rule of thumb:

“When people say something’s a bubble, it’s probably not a bubble. It’s going to be a bubble. When we say, of course, it’s not a bubble…”

That’s a subtle point, but it matters for fintech leaders building and budgeting right now: the risk isn’t just overexuberance — it’s mistaking narrative fatigue for fundamental weakness. Markets can keep funding the buildout longer than operators expect, and then reprice brutally when the story shifts from “promise” to “proof.”

And yes, job displacement came up — but in a way that underscored how hard this transition will be to manage responsibly. If AI adoption accelerates while institutions lag on reskilling, wage growth, and consumer stability, fintech will feel it first: in credit performance, fraud pressure, and customer trust.

Lewis: The Real Excess Is Speed + FOMO + Bad Incentives

Lewis resisted being cast as a market forecaster:

“I have no idea what’s gonna happen… and actually don’t think anybody else [does].”

But he did name the repeatable patterns he’s seen across boom-and-bust cycles:

1. FOMO makes people move before they understand.
   
    “There is feeling that if you don’t grab it, you’re gonna miss it… [so] act before you actually know very much,” he said.
   

2. Incentives protect upside and outsource consequences.
   
   On the post-2008 trader mentality:
   
    “It wasn’t my fault… everybody was doing it.”

For fintech leaders, this is the governance takeaway: if your system rewards speed over accountability, you’re not innovating — you’re accumulating hidden risk.

The Most Revealing AI Moment: Lewis’ Dinner With Sam Altman

Lewis shared a telling story about having dinner with Sam Altman while reporting and pressing a simple question:

“If your machine is so smart… why [not] have your machine write the biography?”

Altman’s answer, via Lewis:

“It’s not smart enough. It’d be a really bad book.”

Lewis pushed: when will it be?

“Maybe a couple of years.”

This landed because it cuts through the noise: today’s models can generate output, but they still struggle with the human parts that matter most in finance — context, judgment, trust, and accountability.

Black Swans: Quantum, AI, and “What Happens When the Customer Isn’t Human?”

The most fintech-relevant part of the night wasn’t a price target — it was the discussion of structural risks.

On crypto, Lee flagged quantum as a non-theoretical threat:

“If quantum can break encryption… your Bitcoin will never be safe.”

And then came a broader question that should be on every fintech roadmap: what happens when AI becomes a primary actor in the economy?

Lee framed it provocatively — that AI could eventually operate with its own validation systems:

“What if AI gets so smart that they’re all running their own blockchain?”

Whether or not that exact scenario plays out, the implication is clear: identity, authentication, and trust infrastructure will matter more than ever when the ‘user’ is an agent.

Prediction Markets vs. Sports Gambling: One Is Signal, One Is Social Risk

The closing segment was unexpectedly blunt.

Lee argued prediction markets can be powerful information tools:

“Prediction markets are actually really useful… it’s the closest thing to a crystal ball.”

Lewis drew a hard line on the broader sports betting boom:

“It’s not good for the society… it’s especially predatory towards young men.”

For fintech leaders, the lesson is bigger than gambling: financialized behavior scales fast — and the downstream consequences land in credit, fraud, and consumer harm.

Why this mattered for fintech leaders

If you strip the night down to one durable lesson, it’s this:

In moments of technological acceleration, the biggest risk is believing the cleanest story — instead of interrogating the incentives underneath it.

Or, in Lewis’ words:

“Think about… their incentives… what is the motive here?”

The hopeful part: this is exactly where fintech can lead.

Because the next era will reward the companies that build trustworthy systems: transparent incentives, resilient identity infrastructure, and products that help consumers navigate volatility instead of amplifying it.

And credit to SoFi for putting a conversation like this onstage: not just market talk, but the kind of cross-current discussion (trust, incentives, policy, and technology) that executives actually need right now.

#3 Fintech Meetup Chairman Sanjib Kalita’s Playbook for Building What Lasts

For the Season 10 kickoff of Humans of Fintech, I sat down with Sanjib Kalita—Fintech Meetup Chairman, former Google Wallet operator, and a rare fintech leader who’s lived on both sides of the equation: building the rails and building the narrative around them.

Early in the conversation, Sanjib dropped a line that perfectly captures the founder whiplash: “At a large company, there’s a lot of people listening to you, but you don’t know what to say—whereas at a small company, you know what to say, but no one’s listening.” It’s funny because it’s true—and it’s also a blueprint for how founders should think about distribution, signal, and momentum.

He also got real about the early grind: “There were moments where I had 20 bucks in my pocket in New York City… and I was still happier then than when I had my corporate job.” Not because struggle is romantic—but because building something of your own can feel like agency.

One of my favorite segments was his “Intel language” story: he created a testing language in the 90s, went back decades later, and learned engineers were still using it—because he paired the tech with clear, visual documentation. The lesson: products don’t scale on code alone. They scale on communication that gives other people power.

Sanjib’s biggest fintech responsibility right now? Simple—and hard: “Think long term.” Not “hit the next metric,” not “raise the next round”—but build something that earns trust over years.

And the rapid-fire closer was the cleanest definition of success I’ve heard in a while: “Love what you’re doing, love the impact you’re having, and love who you spend time with.”

🎧 Listen to the full episode here (and watch on YouTube) for the stories, the playbook, and the real talk.

_{MARK YOUR CALENDARS}

Let’s keep you booked and busy. Every Thursday, I share fintech events worth adding to your calendar— both IRL and online.

_{MONDAY, MARCH 2}

[NEW YORK] ​Celebrate Women’s History Month at the FEMMYs

On March 2 in New York City, we’re celebrating Women’s History Month with the Second Annual FEMMY Awards—a gala-style evening honoring the women actually building the future of fintech.

The FEMMYs are produced by The Academy of Fintech, a community I built around one core belief: the most enduring fintech businesses are built through relationships, trust, and proximity. That’s exactly how I built Fintech Is Femme—side by side with the women in this community.

The Academy is our digital and IRL home for doing that work together.

Membership includes:

• A private Slack of operators, founders, investors, and leaders

• Monthly virtual salons and masterclasses with the women shaping the industry

• Consistent access to rooms where relationships compound into real opportunities

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to step deeper into the fintech ecosystem—this is it.

Join us by attending the FEMMYs, hosting a table, or becoming part of The Academy of Fintech in the way that feels right for you.

_{APRIL 28-30}

[NEW YORK] Fintech Is Femme produces the Official New York Fintech Week Conference 2026

The rumors are true: Fintech Is Femme is leading and producing the official New York Fintech Week Conference—and we’re putting our own spin on the largest gathering of fintech leaders in the financial capital of the world.

To anchor NY Fintech Week, we’ve created: FTW: NYC Fintech Week, a first-of-its-kind, 3-day conference experience built around earned trust, cultural relevance, and real business outcomes. The program brings together Fintech Is Femme’s media-powered community, Fiat Growth’s deal-flow ecosystem, and Frances Zelazny of Identity Strategies as the week's independent authority on identity and security.

Across three cornerstone events—The Fintech Summit by Fiat Growth, The Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit, and The Fintech Security Summit—FTW convenes the founders, operators, investors, and global brands actively shaping the next generation of financial services.

We’re deep in build mode—and early momentum is strong.

Early bird tickets are now live. Grab yours while they last.

_FINTUNES

🎵 BAD BUNNY - NUEVAYoL

Concerts on Sunday!

_{LET’S CONNECT}

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📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

That wraps up today’s edition—thanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo. See you Tuesday!

Love,

Nicole 💜