Brazilian FinTech company Nubank made its debut on the bright lights of the New York Stock Exchange last Thursday under the ticker symbol “NU”. The 289 million IPO shares were priced at $9 a piece and finished their first trading day up by around 15%, raising the company $2.6b and giving it a market cap of $50b.

The Sao Paulo-based fintech was launched in 2013, offering a no-fee credit card in a country notorious for having a high-fee and low-tech banking system. Brazil’s banking industry was ripe for disruption by a company like Nubank, with only five banks controlling more than 80% of the country’s assets, annual credit card interest rates of up to 300%, and a third of the population unbanked.

Nubank’s customer base really took off last year after Cvoid-19 closed Brazil’s few physical bank branches, which only exist in 60% of the country’s cities. According to CEO David Velez, this was when “people started trying us and realized we were a better option.”