It’s worth noting that we have achieved this remarkable result even as Mexico and Colombia continue to be in the early stages of investments, and we believe NU maintains a considerably larger capital base compared to our peers. As a reminder, we’re a holding company holds $2.3 billion 000 in excess capital, which can be strategically allocated to our operating subsidiaries as we continue to grow. As a reference, if we take our Brazilian operation, considering this excess cash, we could cover 3.1x the required capital for Brazil. It’s important to underscore that we’re achieving these strong levels of profitability while making substantial investments in future products and geographic expansion. Simultaneously, we’re delivering a robust 53% year-over-year revenue growth rate, a feat that we believe few financial institutions at our scale can match.
As you can see, we’re once again thrilled with the momentum of our business. And now I’d like to pass the floor to our CFO, Guilherme Lago, who will guide you through our financial numbers. Over to you, Lago.
Guilherme Lago : Thank you, David, and good evening, everyone. As David mentioned, we have once again achieved a strong quarter in terms of our operating and financial key performance indicators. This accomplishment is a result of our commitment to a simple yet powerful value generating strategy, which can be summarized into three guiding principles. First, we continue to expand our customer base in the markets where we operate, weekly transforming new customers into active ones. Second, we are focused on increasing the average revenue per active customer or ARPAC through effective cross selling and upselling initiatives. And third, we are dedicated to achieving growth while maintaining one of the industry’s lowest operating cost structures.
Let’s delve deeper into our third quarter results to understand how these three principles continue driving value for our company. During the third quarter, our customer base continued to display impressive growth, expanding by 27% year-on-year as we welcomed 5.4 million new customers, bringing our total to 89.1 million customer at the quarter’s close. Notably in Brazil, our monthly net additions remain steady with is likely over 1.5 million customers, a significant portion of whom were acquired through cost effective organic channels. In Mexico, our customer count crossed the 4.3 million mark, and in Colombia, we are now serving nearly 800,000 customers. We are preparing to introduce our savings account in Colombia by year-end, anticipating further growth.
Our active customer base increased by 29% year-over-year with the monthly activity rate posting another sequential quarterly increase reaching 82.8%. We believe this outcome underscores news effectiveness in engaging our customers on our platform. Turning our attention to revenue expansion, the first chart highlights that NU has established primary banking relationships with nearly 60% of our active customer base. As we have emphasized in previous discussions, the more customers choose NU as their primary bank, the more products they tend to utilize. We see the synergy between these two factors as continuing to be the driving force behind the sustained quarter-over-quarter growth in the ARPAC. The second chart illustrates our product cross selling performance, showcasing our successful strategy of introduce new products to our customers effectively cross-selling and establishing ourselves as their primary banking partner.
Lastly, the third chart depicts our ARPAC performance. This chart represents the compounding effect of our expanding customer engagement, as demonstrated in the first chart, combined with our growing product cross sell capabilities as shown in the second chart. In this quarter, our monthly ARPAC reached a new milestone breaking into double digits at $10. Furthermore, our more mature cohorts are already achieving a monthly ARPAC of $26. The increase in ARPAC has resulted in another quarter of solid revenue growth as depicted in the next slide. Monthly ARPAC has continued its growth trend, expanding by 18% year-over-year for yet another quarter. As we have emphasized in previous discussions, our confidence remains high that there is a still untapped potential for further ARPAC growth, moving us closer to realizing what we believe is our full ARPAC capacity.
This ARPAC growth, coupled with the expansion of our customer base, has led to a 53% year-over-year increase in revenues, reaching a new record high of $2.1 billion. Now, let’s delve into our cards business. Purchase volumes have surged to 29 billion, marking a 28% increase compared to a year ago. Once again, this growth has been primarily driven by our successful product upsell and cross-sell strategies, as well as stronger customer engagement. The chart on the right illustrates the correlation between purchase volumes and the aging of customer cohorts. Notably, older cohorts continue to exhibit higher purchase volumes spending more per month compared to recent cohorts. We believe the compounding effect of integrating millions of new customers each quarter, coupled with their gradual transition to higher spending patterns, will help support the future growth of purchase volumes.
