The financial services firm now known as Nu made a major domain name upgrade. According to a monitoring alert I have set at DomainIQ, the Whois record for Nu.com has changed and the valuable two letter .com domain name has a new owner.
Nu.com is now owned by Nu, “one of the largest digital financial services platforms in the world.” It looks like Nu had been known as Nubank, and the Nu.com domain name now forwards to the bank’s website at Nu.co. The bank can also be found online at Nubank.com.br.
For many years, NU.com has been owned the Eversource, the New England-based electricity company. Eversource previously used this two letter .com domain name when it was known as Northeast Utilities. It rebranded to Eversource in 2015. Archive.org shows NU.com had been used for a splash page that forwarded visitors to its Eversource.com website. It appears that the domain name changed hands within the last few days.
The acquisition comes amid a rebrand and branding push for Nu. The Inter Miami MLS team opened its new stadium last week – Nu Stadium – with Nu as the name sponsor. The financial services firm had been known as Nubank, but it looks like the company’s website was recently updated with references to Nubank changed to Nu.
Interestingly (to me, anyway), the company also utilizes the .NU ccTLD (from Niue). I was looking at its management page, and I see that informational page is found within the Investidores.nu website.
Now that Nu has acquired its brand matching Nu.com domain name, I wonder if all of its domain names will be merged under Nu.com. I think that would be the smart thing to do and reduce any confusion people could have with multiple websites – unless the company wants to differentiate various business units.
Eversource is a publicly traded company (ES on the NYSE), as is NU via NU Holdings (NU on the NYSE). It’s possible one or both companies could report the sale price of NU.com in a future SEC filing. In the meantime, I added Nu to the list of companies that upgraded its domain name.
A smart move even if it was probably well into seven figures. It reminds me of when Wise moved from TransferWise.com to Wise.com. I doubt they have regretted that.