Nium, a cross-border payments infrastructure company co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, has acquired Cypher, a crypto-native non-custodial wallet and issuing company backed by Y Combinator and Coinbase Ventures.
In a statement on Thursday, Nium said the acquisition can expand its platform to bridge fiat and digital asset payments. Nium said the acquisition brings deep operational knowledge of building and scaling products for crypto-native users while navigating the technical requirements of the blockchain ecosystem.
The acquisition follows Nium’s launch of stablecoin-backed issuing products and the extension of its cross-border payment network to support funding and settlement with stablecoins. Its service has attracted demand from consumer-facing Web3 companies and traditional fintech expanding into digital assets.
Prajit Nanu, CEO of Nium, said money should move as fast as and with as much precision as data regardless of origin or destination. However, today payouts get stuck in correspondent banking flows and trillions sit idle in nostro accounts for days, the executive added.
He said the acquisition gives Nium the muscle to accelerate building the critical infrastructure to drive this change, including trust and value exchange layers needed for agentic payments.
Nium’s cross-border payout network spans 100 currencies and more than 190 countries, with over 100 settling in real time. As a principal card issuer on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and UATP, Nium issues over 41 million card tokens annually and holds regulatory licenses in more than 40 countries.