Nium has acquired Cypher as it pushes deeper into infrastructure for payments between fiat currencies and digital assets. The financial details were not disclosed.
The Singapore-based cross-border payments firm said the deal adds crypto-native expertise to its stablecoin-backed issuing and global money movement infrastructure.
Nium has been expanding its network to support stablecoin funding and settlement, as Web3 firms, wallets, exchanges and fintechs look to connect traditional payment rails with digital assets.
Cypher is a non-custodial wallet and issuing company founded by Kuberan Marimuthu, also known as Kube.
It is backed by Y Combinator and Coinbase Ventures.
The company has spent the past four years building products that connect on-chain finance with traditional banking services.
Marimuthu has joined Nium as Vice President of Digital Assets, reporting to Nium CEO Prajit Nanu.
He previously held engineering leadership roles in payments and risk at Coinbase, Amazon and Zenefits.
Cypher’s engineering team has also joined Nium.
The acquisition gives Nium more technical and operational expertise to serve crypto-native users and support on-chain transactions.
“Money should move as fast as and with as much precision as data, regardless of origin or destination, be it human or machine, consumer or business, local or cross-border, wallet or bank account. Today it doesn’t. Payouts get stuck in the correspondent banking flows.
Trillions sit idle in nostro accounts for days at a time. Agentic payments require the value exchange and trust layers that don’t yet exist at the ecosystem level. We’re building the critical infrastructure to drive this change, and the Cypher acquisition gives us the muscle to accelerate what we build.”
said Prajit Nanu, CEO of Nium.
Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Who is Danny via Magnific