Nubank’s Ethan Eismann: ‘You have to love your customers fanatically for them to love you fanatically’
- Nubank launched Nu Global and a dedicated U.S. product this month, its first consumer launch outside Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.
- Chief Design Officer Ethan Eismann explains why he believes trust in banking is built through app performance and care, not just aesthetics.
Nubank spent 13 years building one of Latin America’s most loved financial brands, growing to more than 140 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. This month, that brand entered the US for the first time, launching Nu Global alongside a dedicated US product built around a Nu Account and a no-annual-fee credit card.
Ethan Eismann is the executive tasked with making that experience work. As Nubank’s first Chief Design Officer, reporting directly to founder and CEO David Vélez, Eismann oversees design strategy across the company’s entire product ecosystem. He joined Nubank in mid-2025 after two decades leading design at Google, Adobe, Uber, Airbnb, and Slack.
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Top-line Takeaway: Nubank Chief Design Officer Ethan Eismann says the company’s U.S. expansion is less about exporting a Brazilian banking product and more about bringing the design principles that helped it build a 140-million-customer franchise in Latin America to a new market. He explains why Nubank has elevated design to the C-suite, treating everything from app speed and task completion to the “smoothness” of 186 distinct customer flows as part of the banking experience. Eismann also argues that trust is built through the small details of a digital product, just as it is in a physical branch, and that customer loyalty comes from a culture of obsessing over the customer experience. Looking ahead, he sees AI, agentic banking, and personalization pushing Nubank toward an experience where products are increasingly tailored to each customer rather than built as one experience for everyone.
Read the whole transcript (for TS Pro subscribers)
A launch built on Latin American lessons
Eismann says the U.S. launch carries over Nubank’s core philosophy from Latin America: reduce banking complexity and make people’s financial lives as simple as possible. “We’ve innovated over the last 13 years within Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico,” he says, “and we’re bringing some of those innovations into the experience in the U.S.”
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