The Canadian FX and payments specialist widened its currency reach, moved payments into Asia from T+3 to same day, and stopped the deductions along the way.
Monex Canada is an FX leader that has moved firmly into payments. Its clients are businesses paying vendors, paying their own entities, and moving money into markets where the currency is the straightforward part and the delivery is not.
What those clients want is easy to state and hard to deliver. Payments should arrive quickly and without fees to move it.
It started with a recommendation
Monex Canada came to Nium the way good working relationships often begin — via a trusted recommendation.
A colleague had worked with Nium at a previous firm and made the introduction. The group's US entity was already a client. And Nium had just launched Nium Connect, which meant Monex Canada could send payments the way its team already worked, by Swift message, rather than through a new API integration.
That last point was a key driver. As part of a global group, Monex Canada shares development resources, and any new integration needs to earn its place in the queue. Being able to start with what the company already had in place made the decision straightforward.
"It seemed like a very fast and easy fit. The onboarding was easy, and Nium was already working with Monex USA. The setup was very painless. It was perfect."
From the team's side, very little changed about how they worked. Monex Canada sends a Swift message to Nium's BIC, exactly as it would to any other counterparty. Nium translates it and routes the payment over local clearing rails in the destination market.
From their clients' side, though, a great deal changed about what arrived — for the better.
The full amount, and sooner
The first difference clients noticed was the amount landing in the beneficiary's account. Payments delivered on local rails avoid the handling and lifting fees that intermediaries take out of a wire in flight.
"It's opening up a different array of currencies. We can send low-value rail payments to, say, the Philippines — which means the end beneficiary gets the full value. They're not getting wire handling fees, lifting fees. That adds a lot of value to our clients. They don't have to send an extra $20, $30. It might not seem like a lot, but if you're stacking up payments, it adds up."
The second difference was timing. Local rails come with more flexible cut-offs and better value dates than the correspondent chain, and the gap is widest on the longest routes.
"Payments are faster, because the client gets more flexible cut-off times and better value dates," said Tareq Rasheed, Senior Operations Manager at Monex Canada. "By wire it's T+2, T+3, especially into Asia. Now we can get next-day, or sometimes same-day for some of the corridors. That helps a lot."
Across the program, Monex Canada now offers clients in the region of 44 currencies, with local rail access on roughly 95% of them, and three more on the way. Head of Operations, Banking and DCS, Kate Fitzgerald summarized that coverage in two words: "Game changer."
A team that picks up the phone
Ask the Monex Canada team what has made the working relationship click, and the answer isn’t message formats.
Implementation ran on weekly calls with the Nium team; those have since moved to a monthly cadence, which is its own kind of result. "During the whole implementation Nium were so responsive," said Fitzgerald. "They've just been fantastic."
A good example was during the Swift ISO 20022 migration, the industry-wide move away from MT103s, and exactly the sort of change that can disrupt a live payment flow. It didn't.
"The team were prepared when the new structure of MX messages came in," said Rasheed. "It was a seamless process to switch over. All the information was there. It actually made things easier than the MT103s — MT103s are a little more strict."
The best kind of endorsement
Asked what she would say if someone in the industry came to her considering Nium, Fitzgerald said:
"Honestly, I just couldn't say enough good things. It's been a pleasure working with Nium. I'd highly recommend you to anyone. That reputation already existed, which is why you were brought to the table in the first place. So you've kept your reputation intact, and it speaks volumes."
Rasheed made the same point with an action rather than a sentence. Monex Canada has since recommended Nium to the group's UK entity, which is now working with the same team. "That's to show what the service has been like," he said. "It spreads the word."
Fitzgerald put the underlying reason plainly: "To have that type of relationship and responsiveness is vital when you're dealing with people's money. If we need to know something, we need someone who answers the phone and helps us with escalations. We work with many, many banks, and we have a ranking of favourites. Nium is up there at the top."
Looking ahead
Monex Canada is growing fast and the conversation with Nium has widened accordingly. More currencies are in progress. So are incoming payments. And so, actively, are stablecoins.
On that last point, the team has a clear view of where the genuine use cases sit today (treasury principally) and is scoping the detail with Nium rather than working from headlines.
It is a considered approach, and it comes with an expectation of the provider: be out in front and show your working.
"You guys are always at the forefront of something. There's always something new — like the stablecoins now — and the communication and education piece around it has been fantastic. We're learning. We learn with you."
Which is a fair description of where this goes next. Monex Canada and Nium are looking at the same things at the same time and have been since the first introduction.
To learn more about what Monex Canada built with with Nium, check out its customer story here >
