Nium nets $200m to become first global B2B payments unicorn from Southeast Asia

Nium, a global B2B payments platform, has raised over $200m in a Series D round led by Riverwood Capital to accelerate its product roadmap and drive global expansion.

Temasek, Visa, Vertex Ventures, Atinum Group of Funds, Beacon Venture Capital, Rocket Capital Investment, and other notable angel investors, including DoorDash executive Gokul Rajaram; Chief Product Officer at FIS Vicky Bindra; and co-founder of Tribe Capital Arjun Sethi, also contributed to the round.  Total money raised by Nium to date, including this Series D, stands at nearly $300m.

Nium’s current valuation is above $1bn, and the company claimed it is now “the first B2B payments unicorn from Southeast Asia”. The funding will be used to expand Nium’s payments network infrastructure, drive innovative product development, attract top industry talent, and acquire strategic technologies and companies. The capital will also be used for speeding up Nium’s growth in the United States and Latin America.

Nium has established its platform as the preferred connection to the global payments infrastructure. Serving hundreds of enterprise clients, and with plans to onboard thousands more, Nium will use the Series D funds to expand its technical infrastructure and add new embedded services.

Through a single API, Nium provides access to the world’s payment infrastructure, including technologies for pay-outs, pay-ins, card issuance, and banking-as-a-service. Once connected, Nium customers can send funds to more than 100 countries, pay out in more than 60 currencies, accept funds in 7 currencies, and issue cards in more than 40 countries. Foundational to Nium is its license portfolio, owning the most complete set of money transfer, card issuance and banking licenses in Fintech, with services available in 11 jurisdictions.

Having processed $8bn in payments annually, it has issued more than 30 million virtual cards to date. Its revenues grew by more than 280% year-over-year. Nium has regional offices in Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, San Francisco, London, Tokyo, Jakarta and Vilnius.

The company has done two recent strategic acquisitions recently, including the acquisition of travel B2B payments leader, Ixaris, which added comprehensive virtual card issuance capabilities to the Nium platform, as well as the acquisition of Wirecard Forex India Private Limited, which gives Nium reach into India’s booming payments market. The Series D investment provides the flexibility to explore additional strategic opportunities.

Nium’s new round adds fuel to a fire shared by a number of companies in the PayTch sector. More recently, Paystand raised $50m in Series C funding to make B2B payments cashless, while Dwolla raised $21m for its API that allows companies to build and facilitate fast payments. In March, Higo brought in $3.3m to do the same in Latin America, while Balance, developing a B2B payments platform that allows merchants to offer a variety of payment methods raised $5.5m in February.

Nium co-founder and CEO Prajit Nanu said, “We started Nium with the humble goal of taking out regional complexity in cross-border payments. Today, our sights are set higher. We believe we can be a global catalyst to increase global commerce, removing some of the payment friction which has traditionally held businesses back.”

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