Brazilian Banks: How many clients do incumbents and fintechs have?

Research evidence excerpt

Brazilian Banks: How many clients do incumbents and fintechs have?

Global Research

23 July 2026ab

Brazilian Banks Equities

AmericasHow many clients do incumbents and fintechs

have? Banks

Thiago Batista, CFA

Analyst

thiago.batista@ubs.com

~1.3bn banking accounts in Brazil in 2Q26 (net adds of 101m LTM) +55-11-3513 6518

The total number of accounts in Brazil increased to 1.3bn, up 25m QoQ (~6 bank Beatriz Shinye

accounts per social security number). The client net adds of newcomers continued Associate Analyst

to be relevant, with the top-5 largest newcomers expanding their client base by beatriz.shinye@ubs.com

10m clients QoQ (39m YoY) - as a comparison, the client base of the top-5 +55-11-2767 6569

incumbents went up 1m QoQ (9m YoY). The performance of Nu and Mercado Pago Kaio Prato

were notable, with Nu expanding its client base to 117m clients in Brazil (up 3m Analyst

QoQ or 11m YoY) - it is the second largest player in terms of total clients (it kaio.prato@ubs.com

surpassed Itaú in 4Q24 and Bradesco in 4Q25) and Mercado Pago increasing 3.4m +55-11-3513 6573

QoQ to 74.7m clients. Camila Azevedo

Associate Analyst

Clients with loans - Incumbents showing a sequential decrease camila.azevedo@ubs.com

Around 36% of the clients from the top-5 incumbent banks have a banking loan in +55-11-2767 6881

2Q26 - note that most of them reported a decrease on its share QoQ. For the top-5

newcomers, the penetration of clients with loans was 36% in 2Q26; however, there is

a big discrepancy among players, as Nu has a credit penetration of 62%, while C6 has

27%, Mercado Pago 25%, Inter 21% and PicPay 19%. For the incumbents, they all

reported a decrease with Bradesco down ~700k QoQ, followed by Santander Brasil

down ~400k and Itaú down ~300k. Meanwhile, Nu recorded a notable increase of