Nivoda cuts through complexity to transform global payments

Introducing Nivoda

Since 2017, Nivoda has revolutionised diamond trading by enabling businesses to showcase and sell their diamonds, precious stones and gems to new markets around the world without incurring significant costs. 

Nivoda’s innovative B2B platform has also changed the way businesses reliably source diamonds, making the process faster, cheaper, and easier. This has paved the way for international recognition and award wins, putting Nivoda in the spotlight.

Today, Nivoda connects high-quality natural and lab-grown diamonds to customers in over 50 countries, with team members spanning 15 countries.

“When we began in 2017, we immediately started operating in the UK, the Netherlands and Hong Kong,” begins Bas Lustenhouwer, CFO at Nivoda. 

A year later, Nivoda launched in the US and India. Fast-forward to today and Nivoda has a presence in 10 countries and serves customers in over 50 countries. 

The Challenge

With such rapid expansion, operational challenges are to be expected. Yet as Nivoda’s global team grappled with multiple time-zones, languages and cultures, a more pressing, financial challenge emerged. 

“Initially, we were accepting payments from customers using Stripe and simple bank accounts,” explains Bas. But with credit card fees eating into margins, most customers opted to pay via bank transfer. 

The lynchpin to Nivoda’s global expansion was a simple and cost-effective solution to accept high-value wire transfers from multiple countries, while also giving customers the convenience of paying in their local currency. 

“Speed is of the essence here,” continues Bas, as he talks about how customers want immediate reassurance their payments have been received. 

But finding a solution that would cater to Nivoda’s diverse global needs, that aligned with their cultural value of putting the customer first, proved difficult. “There are limited solutions out there for companies that are fully global,” adds Bas. 

Bas Lustenhouwer

CFO, Nivoda

“With high-frequency and high-value transactions spanning over 50 countries, we needed a solution to help us manage our global operations.”

Nivoda also needed to make it simpler for employees to make purchases and eliminate costly cross-border fees when employees travelled abroad. In addition to speed and simplicity, Nivoda is bringing a transparent and ethical approach to diamond trading, and therefore needed a payments provider committed to the same.

Happily, Nivoda found Airwallex. 

The Solution

By partnering with Airwallex, Nivoda has supercharged its financial operations and facilitated company growth in the process. 

Smoother, faster payment collections 

By using Airwallex’s core APIs, Nivoda now automatically creates a virtual account for every customer. That means that wherever the customer is based, they can make repeat purchases from Nivoda in their local currency. For Nivoda, the benefits are big too, since without any manual work they can easily track and reconcile incoming payments and provide their customers with the reassurance that their payment has been received. “Every time a customer makes a payment, the Airwallex API lets us know in real-time,” says Bas. 

Convenient spending at home and abroad

Importantly, Airwallex has also helped make tangible gains in Nivoda’s expense management. With a growing team around the world, Nivoda needed to empower its employees to travel globally without forcing them to front the money for their own expenses and then wait through a lengthy reimbursement process. 

Now, Nivoda gives Airwallex multi-currency cards to employees all over the world, allowing them to conveniently make purchases and upload receipts to the Airwallex app. It’s super efficient for the finance team too, since they can manage and monitor all expenses in one place. Plus, with no foreign transaction fees, these cards can be used at home and abroad, streamlining both local and global purchases for Nivoda’s finance team.

Nivoda eyes up future gains with centralised bills and automated supplier payouts 

The enhanced liquidity Nivoda has gained by using Airwallex’s Global Account APIs paved the way for Nivoda to take advantage of Airwallex’s FX offering as well. Plus, Nivoda plans to continue incorporating Airwallex services via API into its core treasury management system in order to reduce manual work in favour of automation. “The result of this will be reduced working capital needs, lower direct costs, less margin of error and a huge reduction in work for the team.” explains Bas.

Having already seen multiple benefits of using Airwallex, Nivoda is currently exploring Airwallex’s Bill Pay product, allowing Nivoda to centrally manage all its bills. Building on that, the Airwallex Payouts API would allow Nivoda to automate payouts to suppliers, driving further efficiencies.  

On the horizon: More payment options for customers

Since the beginning, Nivoda has always recognised the importance of exceptional customer experience. “Our USP is our main cultural value; we always start with the customer,” says Bas. One of the things this means for Nivoda is giving customers the features they need. As a result, Nivoda also plans to use Airwallex’s acquiring capabilities to give customers the option of paying via card or other local payment method tailored to each region, making payments even more convenient.  

Bas Lustenhouwer

CFO, Nivoda

“Airwallex’s global infrastructure allows us to greatly improve the customer experience for all our customers, no matter where they are.”