Nium, a large global payments platform, has announced the acquisition of Wirecard Forex India Pte. Ltd. which is a foreign exchange provider, prepaid card, and remittance service provider in India.
Wirecard is licensed by the Reserve Bank of India as an Authorized Category II Money Exchange Dealer (AD II) and the acquisition will help Nium to acquire this license as well which will, in turn, help it to provide currency conversion, remittances, and other payment service activities across South Asia.
“We’re seeing an accelerated move to digital payments as companies modernize their infrastructure to capitalize on the post-COVID economic recovery,” said Prajit Nanu, Nium’s co-founder, and CEO. “More companies are turning to our global payments stack to embed financial services quickly. This acquisition broadens our licensing portfolio, extends the suite of digital payments services we can offer in India, and provides us with a physical footprint to provide more support in metro areas.”
Wirecard has branches in 23 locations in India and all the employees of the company are expected to join Nium once the acquisition is complete. The regulatory approvals are expected to take a few months and hence the acquisition would be formally complete only in the third quarter of 2021. The payments industry in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 40.2% according to a study, between 2021-2026 and Nium would like to ride this payments wave during the period.
“Nium continues to expand its global operations through strategic acquisitions,” added Pratik Gandhi, Nium’s Chief Operating Officer. “Wirecard Forex has extensive reach throughout India and will enable us to deliver next-generation payment services across all major metropolitan cities.”
Nium has issued over 30 million physical and virtual cards and holds licenses in 11 jurisdictions which gives it a vast market to cover and a capacity to scale even further. With businesses looking for easy and reliable payment processing and fast transfers, Nium would be looking to facilitate these services and grow its business in India and globally as well as the Covid pandemic slowly recedes across the world and people return to shopping and spending which would then drive payment volumes higher in the coming months. The payments industry is expected to continue to boom as more and more of the users are from the younger generation who prefer digital and card-based payment systems rather than cash.
