Nium, the leader in real-time global payments, and OZ Câmbio, today announced a new strategic partnership during the first day of the EVOLVE conference in São Paulo, Brazil. OZ Câmbio (OZ) will use Nium’s global payout infrastructure to help Brazilian businesses move money seamlessly from Brazil to major markets, such as China, Hong Kong, the U.S., the U.K., and beyond. 

For more than 20 years, OZ Câmbio (OZ) has established itself as a leader in the highly regulated Brazilian foreign exchange market. Its services include an international B2B trade platform, mass payments and settlement, and FXasS (foreign exchange as a service). 

“The first product we’re integrating and building new business with alongside Nium is our new white-label platform for SMEs,” said Rodrigo Xavier, CEO of OZ Câmbio. “We chose Nium for its advanced technology and broad payouts reach in 190+ countries around the world –  including some of the most mature economies such as China, Hong Kong, the U.S. and the U.K. That, combined with the real-time speed of their payments at considerably lower transaction costs compared to older global payment rails like Swift, makes Nium our ideal strategic partner to handle payouts abroad from Brazil to the rest of the world.”  

“With our combined forces, Nium and OZ are disrupting global money-exchange rails for the better,” said Christina Hutchinson, VP Business Development, LatAm region for Nium who previously served as the regional director and in-country manager for SWIFT in Brazil for a decade. “Not only do we accelerate the rate of transfers - from two to three business days to just two hours or less – we are providing transformational levels of transparency, traceability, and automated compliance.”   

In Brazil, LatAm’s largest economy, traditional banks and financial institutions do not cater to SMEs (small to medium-sized enterprises) - which is one reason for why the region has established such a reputation for fintech innovation during the last decade. Fintech innovators such as Nium and OZ have greatly sped up global payments so they take just minutes, instead of days, or even more than a week in some instances. They have automated compliance, added transparency, and substantially reduced transaction costs. 

“Nium and OZ will serve SME customers desperately in need of payment solutions that are fast, safe, affordable, and compliant for each region,” said Volker Steinle, SVP and General Manager, Americas Region for Nium. “Nium provides much more than payments. We’re a trusted partner. Our growing roster of customers and partners in Latin America look to Nium to drive their cross-border payments growth. We’re one of the world’s leading money movers with a distinct  combination of global reach and in-market expertise, including regional best practices and how to meet compliance guidelines most effectively.” 

“The new frontier of Brazil’s fintech revolution is about winning business customers, not individuals,” according to The Brazilian Report last month. Brazil now has more than 21 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and they’re the “main target of digital banks and lending fintechs today, as they remain underserved by large banks – even more so at the moment of high-interest rates and creeping default rates,” per the analysis. 

Based on the latest data from the Central Bank of Brazil, the number of legal entities with a bank account rose by nearly 35 percent from 11.4 million to 17.5 million between 2018 and 2022 - the largest jump on record since 2005. That growth rate is close to double the increase in the number of individuals with bank accounts which advanced 18.9 percent in the same period. 

OZ recently launched its SME Cross Border Platform offering, proving ideal for processing international transactions for SMEs. It’s an ideal FX solution for import/export operations, developers/ IT professionals who work for foreign contractors, and companies with extensive international payrolls. It can settle payments made with Brazil’s popular Pix, TED, credit/debit cards, or boleto. The platform is a white-label solution that can be offered to other business partners such as Autonomous Investment Agents (AIA), fintechs and financial institutions. This new product will be expanded with further geographic reach through this partnership. 

“Through our new partnership, Nium provides our customers with a new payments rail that knocks out a lot of the time, complexity, and cost of conducting global business,” said OZ CEO Rodrigo Xavier. “One of our larger business sectors today, Brazilian importers doing business with exporters from Asian giants such as China and Hong Kong, will now be able to transact business almost instantly and much more affordably. For example, our combined customers will pay as little as 30 percent of what it costs for an international transaction using SWIFT, and the payout recipients will receive it within minutes vs. days.”