Following a US$200 million Series D investment round headed by US-based Riverwood Capital, Singapore-based Nium has become Southeast Asia’s 20th unicorn. Nium provides cross-border payment services in different countries across the world.
In addition to Temasek, Visa, Vertex Ventures, Atinum Group of Funds, Beacon Venture Capital, and Rocket Capital Investment, the round included Temasek, Visa, Vertex Ventures, Atinum Group of Funds, Beacon Venture Capital, and Rocket Capital Investment. Angel investors included Gokul Rajaram, the CEO of DoorDash, Vicky Bindra, the CPO of FIS, and Arjun Sethi, the co-founder of Tribe Capital.
This round of funding increases Nium’s total funding to almost $300 million, valuing the company at over $1 billion.
Nium plans to use the additional funds to upgrade its payments network infrastructure, accelerate creative product development, recruit top industry experts, and acquire important technologies and organisations. It also intends to expand in the United States and Latin America.
Nium raised US$78 million in a fresh round of investment earlier this month, according to DealStreetAsia. Nium had announced the purchase of Wirecard Forex India, a foreign currency exchange, pre-paid card, and remittance services provider, just days before this news surfaced.
Wirecard Forex India was a subsidiary of German financial behemoth Wirecard Sales International Holding, which made news last year when it filed for insolvency in June 2020 following one of Europe’s largest accounting scandals.
Nium (formerly referred to as the InstaReM) was founded in 2014 as a global payments platform, enabling companies, in addition to their own products to ease transboundary payment, to transfer, spend and receive money from across the world.
Through a single API, the platform links enterprises to the world’s payment infrastructure. Its Pay In, Pay Out, and Card-Issuance technology enables banks, payment providers, travel firms, and other enterprises to collect and disburse cash in local currencies to over 100 countries, as well as issue real and virtual cards worldwide.
According to the company, it now issues 30 million physical and virtual cards and is licensed in 11 jurisdictions, with direct card issuing capabilities in 24 countries and 40 currencies.
According to the news release, revenues in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and APAC have increased by more than 280 percent year on year.
“We started Nium with the humble goal of taking out regional complexity in cross-border payments,” said Prajit Nanu, co-founder of Nium.
“Today, our sights are set higher. We believe we can be a global catalyst to increase global commerce, removing some of the payments friction which has traditionally held businesses back. We simplify the B2B payments experience by enabling critical financial services to be easily embedded – helping today’s local market players become tomorrow’s global giants,” he added.
Nium previously secured US$41 million in Series C investment in March 2019 headed by Vertexg Growth and US$18 million in Series B funding in July 2017 led by GSR Ventures. MDI Ventures (Indonesia) and SBI-FMO Fund are its other investors.
