Singapore-based cross-border payments company Nium has announced a significant reduction in its valuation, cutting it by 30% as it raised $50 million in a recent funding round. The Series E round, led by an undisclosed Southeast Asian sovereign wealth fund, reflects a drop from its previous $2 billion valuation in 2022 to $1.4 billion.
Nium, which collaborates with Ripple for payment solutions, revealed in a blog post that the funding round received backing from notable venture capital firms including BOND, NewView Capital, and Tribe Capital. The infusion of capital is aimed at accelerating Nium’s growth initiatives, including expanding its global network, enhancing product innovation, increasing its workforce, and pursuing mergers and acquisitions.
Co-founder and CEO Prajit Nanu acknowledged the decreased valuation in an interview with CNBC, attributing it to a “broader depression in public market valuations of fintech companies.” Despite this downturn, Nanu remains optimistic about Nium’s future, reiterating plans to go public within the next 18 months, with an IPO targeted for Q3 or Q4 of 2025.
Founded in 2014 by Prajit Nanu and Michael Bermingham, Nium specializes in cross-border remittances, offering nearly real-time exchange rates for overseas money transfers. In 2018, Nium partnered with Ripple to integrate RippleNet, facilitating payment corridors from North and South America to various destinations in Southeast Asia.
In related news, another cross-border payments startup, XREX, has secured $18.75 million from Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin. This funding will be used to expand USDT-based B2B payments in emerging markets, enhancing financial transactions with greater efficiency and potentially lower costs.
XREX, founded by Wayne Huang and Winston Hsiao, is a Taipei-headquartered crypto exchange platform focused on stablecoin cross-border payments. The investment will support compliant, USDT-based cross-border B2B payments and the launch of XAU1, a stablecoin backed by Tether Gold (XAUt), providing businesses with a hedge against inflation.
The funding for XREX comes from a diverse group of investors, including Taiwan’s Government National Development Fund, CDIB Capital Group, and SBI Holdings. XREX recently obtained a license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to offer services in the region, further bolstering its expansion plans.
For Tether, this investment aligns with its strategy to broaden its international presence. In May, Tether announced its entry into Eastern Europe with an investment in the Georgian payment service CityPay and signed a memorandum of understanding with RAK Digital Assets Oasis (RAK DAO) to promote Bitcoin technology and stablecoin adoption in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.
Meanwhile, researchers at Paradigm, Dan Robinson and Dave White, have introduced Miner Extractable Value (MEV) taxes. This mechanism is designed to enable decentralized applications to capture their own MEV, redirecting value back to users and developers. MEV refers to the profits that miners or validators can gain by reordering, including, or excluding transactions within a block. The European Securities and Markets Authority is currently examining MEV mechanisms to determine if they could be considered market abuse under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
As the fintech landscape continues to evolve, companies like Nium and XREX are navigating complex market dynamics, leveraging new funding and strategic partnerships to drive innovation and growth in cross-border payments.