Cross-border payment company Nium operates globally with dual headquarters in Singapore and San Francisco, and also provides a cross-border card issuance platform. Recently, the company has been active in the stablecoin space, aligning with the development trend of digital assets.

In March this year, Nium announced the addition of several stablecoin services, allowing its financial institutions, enterprises, and fintech clients to hold stablecoins and issue cards on the Visa and Mastercard networks, enabling cardholders to spend cryptocurrency at millions of merchants worldwide.

This month, Nium took another step by acquiring cryptocurrency digital wallet business Cypher (financial details not disclosed). Previously, Nium already supported stablecoin deposits and settlements. This acquisition will help it further develop crypto services for digital transactions within the blockchain ecosystem.

Last week, Nium CEO Prajit Nanu gave an exclusive interview, discussing the acquisition, the company's growth plans, and its stablecoin strategy. To date, Nium has raised a total of $339 million to support its development goals.

Editor's note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Motivation for acquiring Cypher

PAYMENTS DIVE: Why did Nium acquire Cypher?

PRAJIT NANU:Digital assets have gained tremendous momentum recently, especially as stablecoins move toward the mainstream. Take the GENIUS Act, for example, which was introduced about a year ago, making stablecoins a legitimate use case. We see very broad applications for stablecoins. In many countries where traditional finance has low penetration, people may increasingly turn to on-chain financial experiences rather than traditional finance. So, we acquired a consumer company with deep understanding in this area, and we plan to reposition it and transform it into application programming interfaces (APIs), enabling any enterprise to build large-scale on-chain financial services on top of our infrastructure.

Enterprise client base

Besides banks, who are your other enterprise clients?

They could be international groups that need to pay employees, multinational companies with multiple global entities that need to move funds, payroll service companies, and e-commerce marketplace platforms.

Competitive landscape and advantages

The B2B payments space is highly competitive. How do you view this competition?

We believe we have the ability to win in this space because we don't cast a wide net blindly. Our business has high stickiness, and that is our advantage. This is also why some of the world's largest banks choose to work with us, because they need a trusted platform to support their expansion. We are very focused and don't get distracted. We don't do acquiring—many peers are moving into card acquiring, but we don't. Our focus is on enabling more efficient movement of funds across banking networks.

Opportunities in real-time payment systems

Is Nium optimistic about real-time payment systems, such as the Federal Reserve's FedNow instant payment system? That system is piloting support for cross-border payments.

There is a huge opportunity here. Payments need to be instant today—for example, sending money from Europe to the UK, or from the UK to Singapore, where funds arrive instantly because both sides have instant exchange mechanisms that can quickly receive and withdraw funds. Therefore, I believe the U.S. should also embrace this transformation.

Future M&A plans

Are there more acquisition plans?

M&A is a core part of our business. This is our fourth acquisition. We have a clear list of target acquisitions and know exactly what we want. We believe there is room for further consolidation in this market.

Which companies are you targeting?

We are strong in the Asian, European, and U.S. markets, but relatively weak in Latin America and Africa. Therefore, we will increase investment in those regions and look for suitable assets to acquire.