Nium Buys Cypher To Expand Stablecoin Card Infrastructure

Cross-border payments firm Nium has acquired Cypher, a crypto-native non-custodial wallet and card issuing startup backed by Y Combinator and Coinbase Ventures, adding wallet and card infrastructure to its stablecoin payments stack.

The deal brings Cypher founder Kuberan Marimuthu into Nium as vice president of digital assets. Cypher’s engineering team has also joined Nium, giving the payments company a crypto-native group that has spent nearly five years building around wallets, card issuing and onchain user flows.

Nium has been moving deeper into stablecoin infrastructure this year. The company launched a stablecoin card issuance platform in March, built for businesses that want to issue cards funded by digital-dollar balances across Visa and Mastercard through a single API integration.

The acquisition now adds consumer-wallet and crypto-card operating experience to that push. Nium’s existing rails already cover payouts, card issuance, FX and compliance infrastructure, while Cypher’s product history sits closer to the user side of crypto spending.

Stablecoin Payments Move Further Into Cards

The Cypher deal follows Nium’s April stablecoin integration with Coinbase, which enabled USDC payments and fiat payouts for banks, fintechs and enterprise clients across Nium’s global network.

Nium’s card product converts stablecoin balances into fiat at the point of sale, so merchants receive standard card payments rather than crypto. The model keeps the user-facing product close to ordinary card spending while moving settlement, funding and treasury logic closer to digital-dollar infrastructure.

That route has become one of the clearest commercial paths for stablecoins. Crypto card activity has already moved beyond early adopters, with card spending volume surging as users route digital-dollar balances through familiar payment networks.

Card networks are also pushing more settlement activity onchain. Visa added Polygon stablecoin settlement earlier this year, while Mastercard has been expanding always-on settlement experiments across blockchain rails.

Cypher Platform Begins Wind-Down

Cypher’s existing consumer app, business card platform and CYPR ecosystem are being wound down after the acquisition. Card loading and new card issuance stopped on July 8, while the final rewards distribution is scheduled for July 16.

Users can keep using Cypher cards until August 7, when card spending ends and active cards are canceled. Cypher has told users to withdraw remaining balances, claim rewards, back up wallet recovery phrases or private keys, download transaction records and avoid sending funds to Cypher deposit addresses.

The current Cypher mobile app, dApp and business platform will shut down on September 6, 2026. The withdrawal window and rewards claims close on the same date, and the CYPR token ecosystem is set to end as part of the wind-down.

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