Commercial Payments International

Singapore-based Nium, a non-bank card issuer, has partnered with Visa to expand its card issuance programme in Europe. Earlier this year, the two firms struck a similar agreement in Australia.

In May 2020, Nium secured funding from Visa and BRI towards expansion in Europe, India, the UK and the US, as well as towards building payments infrastructure.

Partnering with Visa, Nium will be able to provide end-to-end issuing, processing and on boarding services in a short time. Using Nium based issued corporate cards, businesses will be able to conduct real-time funds transfer to both physical and virtual Visa debit and credit cards. They will also be able to enable secure digital payments through 5okenization for in-stores, online payments and ATM points. The partnership also enables multi-currency cards with multi-pocket spend management features.

Last month, InstaRem, a consumer and SME brand under Nium, launched a solution called BizPay for Singaporean SMEs that is designed to help them improve cash flow.

“While payments are moving online, a lot of the corporate expenditures made by employees are still funded through company-issued cards” said Gitesh Athavale, head of Product (Cards) at Nium. “This is even more prevalent in Europe, where card payments still dominate. We see the need to improve existing card systems used by companies.”

In an email from Nium to Commercial Payments International, the company said that the corporate cards it issues are deferred debit cards. It operates as a white label solution that businesses can then use as corporate cards for employees, vendor payments or to their customers as well. Nium does not offer credit to its customers but in an event of customer default, the company typically secures credit from a reserved account, mostly provided by a corporate partner.