NIUM, a digital payments platform formerly branded as InstaReM and based in Singapore, has announced that it will be supporting Frente Corretora de Câmbio, a foreign exchange broker in Brazil, in its plans to expand its cross-border payments business. The significance of the announcement is that NIUM is also a member of RippleNet, and its new partnership with a Brazilian bank will provide Ripple with a payment corridor into the Brazilian market.
NIUM was founded in 2015 with the expressed purpose of improving the “cross-border payments experience for consumers in the APAC region”. Its partnership with Frente will be a three-step implementation process. Initially, assistance will focus on outbound transfers to the United States for retail consumers. Soon thereafter, the service will expand to include Japan, Australia, and Canada. Lastly, the service will be extended from serving only retail customers to also serving commercial and small to medium sized business customers.
The Payment Journal reports that Prajit Nanu, co-founder and CEO of NIUM said:
We are pleased to partner with Brazil’s Frente Corretora de Câmbio to power their cross-border money transfers. Brazil is an important market for NIUM, and with Frente partnership, we are looking to expand our presence in Latin America. With NIUM’s fast, secure and cost-efficient cross-border digital money transfer platform, customers of Frente will be able to realize quicker remittances, while being more confident about delivery times and payout amounts.
Mr. Ricardo Baraçal, Partner of Frente noted that:
This is a significant partnership for Frente, as we accelerate our pace of growth. Retail remittances is a growing market with overall outward remittances from Brazil having crossed US$ 2 billion. We are experiencing an increasing demand from our customers for cross-border payments services, especially to the countries like Japan, China, United States and in Europe, where NIUM has strong presence. We are confident that the NIUM’s capabilities will strengthen our remittance platform in serving our clients.
Frente is a new entrant in the Brazilian cross-border payment market scene, having been founded in 2017. It has, however, quickly established its presence by ascending to the 20th rank among domestic providers with a goal to achieve the 5th position by the end of 2020. It has built a correspondent network of 250 member institutions and powers its service with a white-label form of the Ripple-powered SIMPLE platform. The bank attributes its rapid growth to the “agility, fair price, and safety” of its SIMPLE platform.
This announcement actually follows one week after a significant meeting took place in Brazil between representatives of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. These emerging economy nations met to discuss the potential use of cryptocurrencies and of constructing an alternative to the SWIFT network, ostensibly to support global trade, but also possibly to evade international sanctions.
The Block reported that Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a $10 billion sovereign wealth fund by the Russian government, told the Russian news outlet RBC Group that the plan was to “create a single payment system and then settle transactions in a single cryptocurrency”. He went on to say that:
An efficiently operating BRICS payment system is able to stimulate settlements in national currencies and ensure the stability of settlements and investments between our countries, which form more than 20% of the global influx of foreign direct investment.