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How Nubank Plans to Enter the US Without the Cold Start Problem

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Try renting an apartment in Miami without a US credit score. Try financing a used car in Houston. Try getting a phone plan in Los Angeles without a Social Security number tied to a bureau file. Millions of Latino immigrants face this sequence every year. They hold jobs, pay rent on time, and send money home to their families every month, yet the financial system records none of it. The credit bureau has no file on them. In the eyes of the traditional scoring model, they do not exist.This is the reality for a population that contributes $4 trillion to the US economy annually.One person who recently experienced this firsthand was Cristina Junqueira, the co-founder of the world’s largest digital bank, who relocated to Miami last year. She carried a billion-dollar stake in Nubank and a decade of credit expertise across three countries. Her first personal financial task in the US was ordinary: apply for a credit card. The process took months, routed through a major bank’s private banking desk.If the system struggles to read a billionaire with twelve years of banking experience, it has a measurement problem. Junqueira’s rejection reflected a structural pattern shared by millions of Americans that […]

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