Brazil’s Nubank has walked away from a possible takeover of British digital lender Monzo, days after talk of the deal knocked about a tenth off its share price.

Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU), Nubank’s parent, made the statement in a stock exchange filing on September 30. It said it does not usually comment on specific opportunities but was responding to the extent of media speculation, and that weighing partnerships, investments and acquisitions is a normal part of its business.

“While we have a great deal of respect for Monzo, the Company is not pursuing a transaction with Monzo,” the company said.

Sky News reported on September 26 that the two sides were in early talks on a deal that could value Monzo at GBP8bn-10bn ($10.6bn-$13.2bn), probably paid in a mix of cash and Nu shares. Monzo had hired Morgan Stanley and Qatalyst to advise it on its options.

A deal on that scale would have been by far the largest in Nubank’s history and its first banking operation outside the Americas. The Sao Paulo-founded lender has built its foreign business by winning licences and growing from scratch, and its acquisitions so far have been small technology deals such as the purchase of AI-for-banks platform Hyperplane in 2024, following Cognitect, Easynvest and Olivia.

Nu’s shares fell by about 10% on September 28, the first trading day after the report, as investors questioned the cost. They gained 6% in after-hours trading once the statement was out, City AM reported. The company is worth about $60bn.

Nu said it would stay focused on deepening its position in Brazil, scaling its businesses in Mexico and Colombia and building its presence in the US and other markets through its Nu Global unit.

Nubank had 139mn customers at the end of June, about 118mn of them in Brazil, and its quarterly net income passed $1bn for the first time in the second quarter, at $1.1bn, on revenue of nearly $5.9bn, according to its second-quarter results. Full-year profit for 2025 rose 51% to $2.87bn, and it has overtaken Bradesco to become Brazil’s second-largest financial institution by customers, behind only state-owned Caixa Economica Federal.

Mexico, which Nubank entered in 2019, is the most advanced of its foreign ventures. Nu Mexico won authorisation from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) in July to operate as a full bank, with more than 15mn customers. The unit broke even in the first quarter of 2026, and Nubank plans to invest a total of $4.2bn in the country by 2030.

In Colombia, where it has more than 5mn customers, Nubank still operates under a finance-company licence rather than a full banking charter.

Nubank’s newest market is the US, where it applied for a national bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2025 and won conditional approval in January 2026. In September it launched an interest-bearing US account, and founder and chief executive David Velez put the cost of the US “test” at $200mn-$300mn over two years.

Outside the Americas, Nubank’s largest move so far was a $150mn investment for a 10% stake in Tyme Group, a Singapore-headquartered digital bank operating in South Africa and the Philippines, in December 2024. The following month Velez said Nu was considering moving its legal domicile from the Cayman Islands to the UK as it planned the next decade of global expansion. For now, however, its European operations remain limited to an engineering and technology hub in Berlin.

Monzo would have given Nubank a European base from which to take on Revolut, which is pushing into Latin America. The London-based group, valued at $115bn with more than 80mn customers, runs a licensed bank in Mexico, won its final Colombian banking licence in September and has approval in Argentina to buy a local consumer lender. Both Nubank and Revolut hold conditional approval for US national bank charters.

Monzo, launched in 2015, has more than 15mn personal customers and about 1mn business customers. Its revenue rose to GBP1.7bn ($2.2bn) in the 12 months to March 2026 from GBP1.2bn a year earlier. Its last formal valuation was GBP4.5bn ($6.0bn), set in an employee share sale in October 2024.

Sky News has reported that buyout group Advent International is among private equity firms that held early talks about a minority stake in Monzo, an alternative to a sale. Monzo, which pulled out of the US earlier this year, has started operating in Ireland and is working to establish itself in Spain.

The end of the talks could revive hopes of a London flotation, which British policymakers have been urging the country’s leading fintechs to pursue. Monzo was reported in May 2025 to be preparing for a possible GBP6bn ($7.9bn) listing, but chief executive Diana Layfield said in May that there were “no plans right now” for one, according to The Times.