Nium Hits Unicorn Status With $200M Funding Round

Singapore’s Nium became the first B2B payments unicorn in Southeast Asia Tuesday (July 27) following a $200 million Series D funding round.

Led by Riverwood Capital, the round puts Nium’s valuation north of $1 billion, per the news release announcing the fundraise. Nium has raised nearly $300 million to date, including this latest funding round.

Nium’s application programming interface (API) provides customers with the tools for things like pay-outs, pay-ins, card issuance and Banking as a Service. Customers can send funds to more than 100 countries (in real time in most instances), pay out in more than 60 currencies, accept payments in seven currencies and issue cards in more than 40 countries, the release stated.

“Nium’s business has significantly scaled in the past year,” the company said. “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.”

The company said it will use funds to expand the company’s payments infrastructure, develop products, attract talent and acquire other companies and new technologies, as well as to boost its reach across the United States and Latin America.

“We believe we can be a global catalyst to increase global commerce, removing some of the payments friction that has traditionally held businesses back,” said Prajit Nanu, Nium’s co-founder and CEO. “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.”

PYMNTS looked at the benefits of Banking as a Service (Baas) last year as part of the Smarter Payments Tracker, powered by Nium. As reported at the time, the rise of BaaS “offers businesses a more flexible alternative by allowing firms to quickly integrate new third-party solutions into legacy systems, including new spend management innovations. This approach can be compelling for employers that need to quickly solve problems to grow their workforces and operations worldwide.”

For more on Nium and Baas, read PYMNTS’ interview with Nilesh Pathak, the company’s chief technology officer.