The Short Answer
Nu Holdings stock (NU) is not halal for Muslim investors. Nubank's core business is built on riba (interest) — the company earns the majority of its revenue from credit card interest charges, consumer loan interest, and interest on deposits. Interest-based lending and borrowing is explicitly prohibited in the Quran and Sunnah, and Nubank's entire business model depends on it.
Current quantitative Sharia screen
Based on 20-F figures for the period ended 2025-12-31; calculated 2026-07-14.
4,427.413 / 74,893.877
31,362.146 / 74,893.877
43,693.688 / 74,893.877
13,434.683 / 15,774.741
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Liquidity/assets is 41.88%, receivables plus cash/assets is 58.34% and disclosed interest income is 85.17%, above the examined limits; the core banking business also fails.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Liquidity/assets and receivables plus cash/assets exceed the examined MSCI total-assets limits, and the core business is riba-based.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Identifiable liquidity/assets is 41.88%, above the examined 33% limit; the core banking business also fails. This is not an official SAC classification.
- Financial
- Not calculated
- Overall
- Not calculated
A properly licensed and reproducible historical market-cap series is not stored.
Business-activity disclosure
Nu is a digital bank whose core products include interest-bearing credit cards, personal and SME loans, deposits and related financial services. The core business is riba-based and fails the business screen.
Limitation: The filing aggregates interest, fair-value gains, card income, fees, late fees and insurance commissions; the conservative interest-income proxy does not classify every ancillary fee.
Purification
Interest income and gains are material and the core business screen fails; ZakatInvest does not prescribe purification as a cure for a prohibited business.
Inputs, assumptions and primary sources
- Amounts are USD millions from Nu's audited 2025 Form 20-F.
- Debt includes $4,398.216 million of borrowings and financing plus $29.197 million of lease liabilities.
- Identifiable securities include $1,059.923 million at fair value through profit or loss, $12,157.076 million at fair value through OCI and $3,141.504 million at amortized cost; cash is $15,003.643 million.
- Receivables include credit-card receivables, loans to customers and other receivables of $28,690.045 million.
- Interest income and gains net of losses on financial instruments were $13,434.683 million, or 85.17% of revenue, and are used as a conservative proxy for non-compliant financial income.
This is a reproducible financial screen, not a fatwa. A failed total-assets screen can coexist with a pass under a market-cap methodology. ZakatInvest keeps the qualitative assessment separate so numerical thresholds do not erase material context.
This is not a close case — Nu Holdings fails the most fundamental Islamic financial screen at the business activity level. The latest audited figures also show material liquidity, receivables and interest-income ratios; no amount of quantitative ratio analysis changes this structural incompatibility with Sharia.
Sharia Screening Methodology
Islamic scholars use several criteria to screen stocks:
- Business activity screen: Is the company's primary business halal?
- Debt ratio: Total debt / market cap must be under 33%
- Interest income: Interest income / total revenue must be under 5%
- Haram revenue: Revenue from haram sources must be under 5%
- Receivables ratio: Total receivables / total assets must be under 49–70% (varies by board)
What Nu Holdings (Nubank) Does
Nubank is a digital-first consumer financial services company. Revenue breakdown:
- Interest income and financial gains (85.17% of 2025 revenue): The filing reports $13,434.683 million from credit-card, loan, other-receivable and financial-instrument income and gains.
- Fee and commission income: The remaining revenue includes card, late-fee, insurance and other fee income, but those categories do not turn the core credit business into a halal one.
- Personal loan and installment credit: Interest-bearing personal loans and revolving or refinanced card balances are central products.
Nubank is, at its core, a consumer lending company. Its revolutionary "zero fee" banking experience is funded by extracting interest revenue from credit card holders who carry balances — predominantly lower-income consumers in Brazil who often pay extremely high interest rates.
The Riba Problem
Riba (interest/usury) is one of the most clearly prohibited practices in Islam. The Quran states:
"Allah has permitted trade and forbidden riba." (Quran 2:275)
"O you who have believed, fear Allah and give up what remains of riba, if you should be believers." (Quran 2:278)
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) cursed the one who takes riba, the one who gives it, the one who records it, and the two witnesses to it. (Muslim)
Nubank's business is fundamentally riba. The 2025 filing reports $13,434.683 million of interest income and gains, or 85.17% of revenue. This is not incidental to its business — it is the business.
Financial Ratios (2025)
Nu Holdings fails on multiple screens:
- Business Activity: Digital bank / consumer lender ❌ (core business is riba)
- Interest Income / Revenue: 85.17% ❌ (threshold: under 5%)
- Haram Revenue: Interest-bearing credit products are the dominant revenue driver ❌
Nu Holdings fails the fundamental business activity screen and the interest income screen simultaneously.
Is There Any Halal Angle?
Some investors ask whether Nubank's technology platform — the apps, the user experience, the payment infrastructure — could be considered separately from the lending business. The answer is no: these are not separable businesses. The technology platform exists to deliver and monetize financial products (credit cards and loans), and Nubank cannot be evaluated without its core revenue model.
Nubank does not operate any Islamic banking or takaful products.
Why This Screen Does Not Borrow Unsupported Agency Labels
Nu Holdings is not treated as compliant here because the filing-backed business and financial evidence independently fails the screen. External app or index labels can differ by date, denominator, data vendor and scholar policy, so they are not presented as current certification.
- The core business is interest-based consumer banking.
- The disclosed interest-income ratio is above the examined 5% threshold.
- Asset-based liquidity and receivables ratios also exceed the examined limits under multiple methodologies.
Bottom Line
Nu Holdings (NU) is not halal for Muslim investors. The company is a digital bank whose business is built on charging interest on consumer credit — a direct form of riba explicitly prohibited in the Quran. This is a structural incompatibility with Islamic finance, regardless of how innovative or consumer-friendly the platform is.
Muslim investors interested in fintech exposure should look at payment technology companies (Visa, Mastercard) or B2B software companies rather than consumer lending businesses.
NU's core business is consumer lending and credit card interest — a direct form of riba that is explicitly prohibited in Islam.
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