Singapore's Nium raises capital at $2b valuation
Singapore-based payments technology provider Nium claims to have doubled its valuation in the past 24 months to USD 2bn with new investors such as US-based Bond and Moore Capital joining the capital table.
Bond, a vehicle launched by Silicon Valley veteran Mary Meeker, is best known in Asia as a backer of Australia’s Canva and India’s Byju’s, category leaders in graphic design and education respectively. AVCJ has records for Moore investing USD 5m in Nium in March last year.
Nium was valued at USD 1bn as of its USD 200m Series D round in July 2021, which featured Riverwood Capital, Vertex Ventures, Atinum Group of Funds, Beacon Venture Capital, Rocket Capital Investment, Tribe Capital, Temasek Holdings, and Visa. That round was touted as establishing the company as Southeast Asia’s first B2B payments unicorn.
Since then, incoming investors have also included NewView Capital, a US-based VC firm with a track record of deploying operating partners to support regional start-ups such as Australian telehealth services provider Eucalyptus, which is also backed by Bond.
"Moving money across borders is broken. Legacy banks and payment processors have failed to give businesses the solutions they need to expand globally. Nium fills this gap and has emerged as the new global business standard for real-time, cross-border money movement,” Nium founder and CEO Prajit Nanu said in a statement.
"Our investors believe in our mission of building the payments infrastructure for on-demand money and our funding has helped us accelerate our growth aspirations.”
Launched as Instarem in 2014, Nium brands itself as the leader in real-time global payments, with growth supported by the onset of the so-called on-demand economy. Its payout network supports 100 currencies and spans 190-plus countries, 100 of them in real-time.
The company holds regulatory licenses and authorisations for onboarding, integration, and compliance in about 40 countries. Funds can be disbursed to accounts, wallets, and cards, and collected locally in 35 markets. The card issuance business is already available in 34 countries.
Nium claims to be the first fintech company from Singapore to have over 20 offices globally. In addition to Singapore, there are bases in San Francisco (dual headquarters), Hong Kong, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, London, and Amsterdam.
In 2022, the company focused its development on serving high-growth client use cases, in industries such as travel, payroll, spend management, and financial services. Revenue is said to have increased 2.7x during the year to USD 82m.
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