How Nium Helped Volopay Enable Seamless Cross-Border Transactions With Prepaid Card Solutions

Founded in 2019, Volopay is a Singapore-based startup building a financial control centre for modern businesses. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that do international transactions face two common hurdles: high FX fees and corporate expense management. Volopay solves these problems by combining business accounts, corporate cards, bill payments, expense reimbursements, cashbacks and accounting automation into one easy-to-use platform. Since its launch, Volopay has witnessed a 70% month-on-month growth in Singapore. 

Volopay approached Nium for its robust infrastructure to integrate an efficient API into their existing system and streamline the client onboarding process. With Nium’s card-issuing offering, Volopay can enable seamless cross border transactions, issue corporate cards and manage employee expenses for their clients. Such a partnership will benefit Volopay’s plans for international expansion, especially in Australia, where traditional cross-border transactions are expensive [1]. 

“After shifting to Nium, their VISA cards have been accepted at major merchants and have been well received by clients. The Nium team has been helpful in solving certain issues for us.”

- Rajith Shaji, Founder, Volopay

The Challenges 

• Lack of an International payments API: Sending funds through traditional methods can be costly. Businesses often have to incur hefty administration costs and transaction fees. Banks generally use this system, which requires a series of banks or intermediaries to work in partnership for the funds to reach their final destination [2]. Given that banks have to comply with stringent regulations, the process becomes not only expensive but also time-consuming, taking as many as five days for the recipient to receive their funds.   
• Alternatively, financial institutions that prioritise their offerings using APIs have an upper hand over the ones that don’t. APIs make it possible for Fintech providers to integrate their applications with their client’s existing business systems without affecting the security or integrity of those systems. From a business’ operational perspective, upgrading from a legacy system can be a challenge. However, with Nium, businesses can add an international API into their systems through one simple integration. 

Managing high FX charges 

High FX rates are one of the biggest challenges facing businesses handling international transactions. Further, banks and many international payment providers often charge certain hidden fees that add to the FX spread. This can be a deterrent for businesses looking to expand into new countries and avail seamless cross-border transactions. Therefore, businesses should ensure that they partner with a payment provider who will be transparent about the transaction and FX fees to avoid any hidden costs. 

Nium offers Volopay real-time FX rates that don’t include any mark-up or profit margin. Additionally, Nium also takes on the risks associated with foreign exchange movements. 

Mitigating fraud risks

The risk of fraud is a concern for every business, but it is more so in the case of cross-border transactions. Since international payments involve multiple markets, vendors, convoluted regulations and currencies, protecting your customers’ data becomes even more crucial [3]. Through their partnership with Nium, Volopay can now help their clients to keep track of each transaction and minimise payment failures with Nium’s corporate card solution. 

Nium’s robust platform provides businesses with fraud prevention tools for all transactions. Equipped with end-to-end encryption and a secure DSI compliant platform, businesses can rest assured that the transactions are safe and monitored for any potential risks. 

How Nium helps

• Global coverage - The physical and virtual corporate cards that Volopay issues to businesses in Singapore use Nium’s infrastructure to operate giving them global acceptance to make payments. Users can use these cards to make both domestic and international payments.
• Cash withdrawal - Travelling business personnel can also use the Volopay corporate cards issued in Singapore to withdraw from ATMs.
• Faster card issuance - Thanks to Nium’s partnership with VISA, Volopay is also able to issue these cards much faster and provide their customers with quick access to their corporate cards.
• Additional support and features - Nium’s constant support helps Volopay resolve any issues quickly so that customers don’t face issues making payments. Apart from this, there are constant improvements and additional features that are in progress such as support for the corporate cards on Apple Pay.

Why did Volopay choose Nium?

Volopay chose Nium to create a seamless expense management system that can disburse payments to employees and vendors across the globe. Nium is a licensed Visa card issuer partner. This means that businesses like Volopay can take advantage of Nium’s payment rails, along with Visa’s global licence network, to scale faster and expand into new markets. After integrating Nium’s solution, Volopay has been able to increase card acceptance among vendors by 30%. 

“The Nium tech team is prompt in their responses and actions. Also, Nium has APIs to support various card features.” – Rajesh Raikwar, Founder & CTO, Volopay

Nium’s platform allows businesses to:

• Load money into the prepaid card using their own debit/credit card
• Allow employees to access their money from almost anywhere around the world
• Set spending limits
• Access real-time and same-day payments 
• Integrate  existing systems with Nium’s customisable API solutions 
• Fasttrack onboarding of clients 
• Manage the cost of overseas spends with multi-currency cards
• Mitigate risk and save money with a turnkey platform
• Control FX conversion costs by applying exclusive rates for inter and intra-company cross-border payments
• Comply with international banking regulations
• Track payments from start to end
• Lock an employee/vendor account, if needed, with the click of a button

How do businesses benefit from Nium? 

Nium has transformed businesses across sectors. Here’s how our services benefitted the client and can benefit your business, too:  

Streamlined Onboarding - Since Nium is a Visa issuer, this not only ensures a smooth onboarding process for your clients,  but you can also swiftly move to issuing cards in just 4 weeks. For Volopay, this proved to be an immensely beneficial feature, considering they are expanding into new markets. 

Virtual and Physical Cards - Nium allows businesses to provide their employees with unique logins and personal debit cards – both physical and virtual. Nium’s card customisation offering helps businesses like Volopay stand out in the crowd. 

Enhanced User Experience - Nium offers open-loop prepaid solutions. This means that employees can efficiently send allowances from a centralised digital wallet. Businesses can easily manage a budget for employees, as a set amount of funds can be loaded in advance. They can streamline and automate disbursements, while controlling FX conversion costs.  

Superior Security - Nium allows businesses to manage their program’s security in one place, including card lock/unlock, geolocation data, and cardholder permissions.

Advanced Spend Control - Real-time updates allow businesses to track and manage expenses as they happen. With this, businesses are able to control how much their employees can spend (limits) and where they can spend (based on merchant categories), grant authorisations to spend, etc.

How It Works

1. Setup: After integrating with Nium, businesses can set up and define their program using limits and controls.
2. Share: Once the program is complete, management can assign cards and login details to each employee.
3. Fund: Each employee’s card is then pre-funded with a set amount of money like a regular debit card.
4. Spend: Employees can spend the funds on approved items until the funds run out.
5. Track: Each payment is automatically tracked, logged and made into expense reports viewable within Nium’s app.