Nuvei’s Neil Erlick: payment technology that turns the world into a local marketplace

“Our goal is to turn the world into a local marketplace by connecting our partners with their customers, enabling the highest level of acceptance for payments both on the way in and on the way out, wherever they are in the world.”

That was a headline message from this exclusive GamblingTV interview with Neil Erlick, who is the new Chief Corporate Development Officer at Nuvei – a global payment solutions provider which closed TSX’s largest ever tech IPO in September of last year.

Emphasizing the firm’s global presence, Erlick confirmed: “We operate in over 200 markets around the world. We have over 455 different alternative payment methods (APMs) in 150 currencies, and this is all done through a single platform.”

Addressing the recent period of change in the digital payments space, influenced both by the pandemic and advances in technology, he added: “Things change very quickly but we can handle all the heavy lifting on behalf of our partners so they don’t have to worry about what’s changing, or how quickly it’s changing. We take that stress away from them.”

One such change has been the increased demand for cryptocurrencies, which has led Nuvei to add 40 cryptocurrencies to the APM mix. “If you’d have told me five years ago that we’d be offering 40 cryptocurrencies to thousands of merchants around the world, I’d have looked at you like you were crazy,” Erlick admitted.

Throughout the session, he circled back several times to having 455 APMs available through the Nuvei platform, thereby catering to the widest range of customers. You might instinctively perceive that to be an overkill of payment methods, but Erlick offered this justification.

“When you think about all the countries we work in across the world, everyone has different needs,” he said. “So we always keep in mind – how do we get our partner the most amount of approved transactions? And how do we ensure that a customer coming to their site has all the tools to do what they’re looking to do in a fast but safe environment. That’s going to change from country to country, and market to market.

“If you have a client that’s in Brazil, Mexico or Colombia, against another client in Germany, we’re not going to show the same payment types. Through our technology and expertise, we’re able to see which is going to have the highest acceptance rate in each market, and offer that to the customer so they have the best user experience possible.”

This ability to customize from partner to partner is a key message for Nuvei, essentially offering the most relevant payment types per country rather than just drawing on a ‘solution in a box’ that is then forced upon its customers irrespective of market conditions.

Of course, this concept of delivery per country goes a step further in the US where – in the absence of federal regulation – each state becomes a market in its own right.

Highlighting the importance of the US market to the Nuvei platform, and the need to provide the widest range of payment methods, Erlick said: “Through our single integration – the one platform, back end and back office – we have plugged in every single deposit type available in the US today. You don’t need us to connect all of them, but if you want to you can.”

During the interview, Erlick also touched upon entering a definitive agreement to acquire Mazooma, a US gaming and sports wagering payment technology provider, in a deal for a starting $56m which could reach a total maximum value of approximately $315m.

“We think it’s a game changer,” he said. “With what they bring from account to account payments and – through a collaboration with Plaid – their connection to 11,000 financial institutions (FIs) in the US. We also had another  previous acquisition about a year ago with Base Commerce that helped us with our Automated Clearing House (ACH) capabilities.

“So we feel really comfortable with our positioning moving forward in the US, with all the different payment types. But not only because we’re comfortable, we think we’re bringing a great solution to our merchants and partners, and ultimately their customers.”

To watch the interview in full, please click HERE.