Introduction to funding

Nium works on a prepaid model. This means before you can start creating virtual cards and making payments with Nium, you need to add money to your Nium account. The process of adding money to your account is also called funding your account.

You can fund your account by sending a bank transfer to one of our banking providers' bank accounts. These are safeguarded accounts where we securely hold our clients' funds.

Once our banking providers receive your money, it is automatically routed to one of your Nium funding accounts.

What are funding accounts?

After you send a bank transfer to fund your account, that money is added to a funding account in Nium. You can then use this money to top-up your virtual cards.

We will set up funding accounts for you when we onboard you to Nium. You will have a funding account for every available currency that you plan to make card purchases with. (By default, you will get one funding account per currency. However, you can also request secondary funding accounts if necessary.)

You can create and top-up virtual cards if you have a funding account in a particular currency. For example, if you have a GBP funding account, you will use the money in this account to top up all the GBP virtual cards you create.

How do virtual cards work?

Once the money is available in your funding accounts, you can create and use virtual cards. Nium supports two types of virtual cards:

1. Single-use cards can be used for purchases one time only. This type of card is automatically deleted on settlement. If you don't spend the entire balance of a single-use card, any money remaining on the card after its one-time use is transferred back to the card's corresponding funding account.

2. Multi-use cards can be used for as many purchases as you wish. This card type needs to be manually deleted when no longer in use.

Is my money safe with Ixaris?

We hold clients' money in safeguarded bank accounts. Additionally, Ixaris USA LLC (company registration number 7508714) is a Limited Liability Company, registered under the Laws of Delaware, USA, and operates under a program sponsored by Metropolitan Commercial Bank.

Bank account approval

To recap, you will add money to your Nium account by sending a bank transfer from your bank account (also called a funding source) to one of our banking providers' bank accounts. Your money will be transferred from our banking providers' bank account to one of your funding accounts in Nium.

As part of our regulatory requirements, we need to verify all the bank accounts (funding sources) you use to transfer money to our platform before we can accept them as approved funding sources. To do this, during your onboarding process, we will ask you to provide some information related to your bank accounts in a KYB questionnaire.

If you change banks or need to add an alternative bank account, you must request us to approve this new funding source.

To have your bank account approved as a funding source, follow these steps:

1. Obtain a bank statement from your bank
   1. The statement must meet the following criteria:
   • It must be recent (up to 3 months old)
   • It must have your account holder's name
   • It must have your IBAN/Account number
   • It must have the bank logo
2. Send the bank statement to [email protected]

Banking definitions

ACH

Each day, banks and corporations all over America gather ACH (Automated Clearing House) withdrawal and deposit requests into batches and send them to the centralized Automated Clearing House at set times. From there, the Clearing House sends the credit or debit transaction requests out, generally the following day. This system isn't the fastest. It can sometimes take several days for a payment or a deduction to clear. However, this is a low-cost system (most ACH transfers are free or only a few cents per transaction). It is one of the only USD domestic payments always to be credited in full.

CHIPS

CHIPS (Clearing House Interbank Payments System) acts as a USD netting engine, where payments between parties are netted against each other instead of the full dollar value of both trades being sent. Banks send and receive payments from 9 am to 5 pm (EST). During that time, CHIPS nets and releases payments. From 5 pm until $5.15$ pm (EST) the CHIPS system eliminates credit limits and releases and nets unresolved payments. By $5.15$ pm, CHIPS releases all remaining payments and sends payment orders to banks via Fedwire.

Fedwire

Fedwire is a real-time gross settlement funds transfer system operated by the US Federal Reserve Bank that allows financial institutions to transfer funds electronically.

SWIFT

SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a network that allows banks to communicate financial information securely. Most banks and building societies offer SWIFT payments for international fund transfers. SWIFT payments involve a series of banks that work together to ensure your funds are in the right place. You can think of it like making a journey yourself - if there isn't a direct flight to your destination, you might take a series of connecting flights to get there. In the same way, your SWIFT payment can end up being moved between one and three correspondent (or intermediary) banks before reaching your recipient. SWIFT payments are the most common choice for high-street banks making international payments, but they're not necessarily the cheapest or fastest option.