Nium becomes first global B2B payments Unicorn from Southeast Asia

By Leandra Monteiro

Nium, a global B2B payments platform, today announced it has raised a US$200+ million in a Series D round led by Riverwood Capital, a US-based high-growth tech investor. 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.

Nium’s current valuation is above US$1 billion, making it the first B2B payments unicorn from Southeast Asia. The funding will be used to expand it’s payments network infrastructure, drive innovative product development, attract top industry talent, and acquire strategic technologies and companies. Total money raised by the company to date, including this Series D, stands at nearly US$300 million.

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 FinTech 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.

“We started Nium with the humble goal of taking out regional complexity in cross-border payments,” said Prajit Nanu, Nium’s Co-founder and CEO. “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. The Nium platform simplifies the B2B payments experience by enabling critical financial services to be easily embedded – helping today’s local market players become tomorrow’s global giants.”

Nium’s business has significantly scaled in the past year. Nium processes US$8 billion in payments annually. It has issued more than 30 million virtual cards to date. Revenues grew by more than 280 percent year-over-year. With revenues split almost equally across EMEA and APAC, Nium will use funds from this round to accelerate growth in the United States and Latin America.

Success will be driven by two recent strategic acquisitions, 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 greater reach into India’s booming payments market. The Series D investment provides the flexibility to explore additional strategic opportunities.

“Prajit and the incredibly talented team at Nium have redefined payments for the modern era with an infrastructure that finally makes it easy for companies to embed financial services into business and banking applications,” said Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, Co-Founding Partner and Managing Partner, Riverwood Capital. “We could not be more excited about this partnership and look forward to seeing Nium continue to set the standard for how global payments are delivered.”

“Nium has built an extremely rare global footprint of licensed infrastructure that brings the world closer to global real time gross settlement,” added Alex Porto, Principal, Riverwood Capital. “We believe that Nium is on track to be a central component of the global fabric, providing faster and more democratic money movement and we look forward to supporting their growth in this next phase.”

The capital infusion arrives at a time when the global market opportunities for Nium in embedded financial services, cross-border transfers, and card payments are large and rapidly expanding. Nium estimates these global trends to have a total addressable market of nearly US$50 trillion.