Ouribank does not wait for the industry to catch up. It builds real technology on the back-end, staying ahead of Brazil's constantly evolving payments landscape. As Bruno Foresti, Director at Ouribank put it, the whole point of working with Nium comes down to one thing:
"It's not because we like to be a pilot. It's because we really understand that whoever gets there first delivers the best service to the client. Nobody is having secret gems. The industry is all about somebody doing something different, and if it works, everybody else starts to copy that. It's all about having our clients say, 'Ouribank was the first one to offer us this kind of solution.'"
Starting with a Swift message
Ouribank and Nium’s partnership started back in 2019. The bank has spent years powering cross-border fintechs, so it understands exactly what running on APIs involves. Its own flows, though, are mostly imports and exports, and its clients still work the way the industry always has, primarily in Swift messages. Ouribank wanted to give these clients a better experience — without rebuilding everything to do it.
"We were keen to test whenever we were able to send Swift messages instead of connecting via APIs. And Nium was the first player who said, 'Okay, we're up to do that.' If you guys are able to receive a Swift message and transform that into a local payment anywhere, we're good to go, and we're more than happy to be a pilot."
The reasoning was deliberate. Ouribank runs its final compliance and sanctions checks in the moment before a transaction goes to Swift. Rebuilding that on a new API integration would mean rebuilding the whole governance chain around it.
"It's not only building up a new API integration, it's building up the whole governance and compliance procedures in this new place, adding new counterparties to our internal allow list,” said Foresti. “We'd need to replicate that across several different lists feeding different payment routes. Working on a message layout is way easier than building a whole new integration. We needed to start somewhere."
Swift Connect was the lowest-friction way to prove the idea on the rails Ouribank already trusted.
When things don’t go to plan, Nium responds
Sadi Tomazoni Junior, Treasury Superintendent at Ouribank, drove the project internally, pushing the teams and working closely with Nium to get it live.
Projects around payments are always complex. The stakes are high, the variables almost endless, and the margin for error zero. Staying true to Ouribank’s customer-first mentality was key. Sadi and Bruno were frank about the challenges involved.
"We can't make promises that we won't have problems. Problems are always there. It's all about how you behave when you're facing a problem. And the way Nium behaves regarding any issues we face — bringing up the relevant internal teams to discuss the pain points, what to adjust — was great."
The clients never see the complexity
Ouribank doesn't sell Nium to its clients. It sells the outcome.
"Our clients aren't saying, 'I want this payment routed via Nium, or via a big bank, or whatever.' They come to the bank and say, 'I need this payment to arrive at point B,'” observed Foresti. “It's all about getting the complexity out of the decision for the client and bringing it internally to our house."
And routed well, the difference is tangible. This ranges from Brazilian shoppers serving personal shoppers in Florida, to the Brazilian families sending money home across Europe via SEPA.
"They're used to waiting until the next day. When they send through us, the payment arrives in the beneficiary account in 20 minutes, 50 minutes, an hour,” said Foresti. “So it's, 'I'd rather do this with Ouribank — because if I do it with someone else, my daughter receives the payment tomorrow, instead of today.'"
"Now the word is spreading: 'Talk to Ouribank, because they know how to make the payments arrive on my account without deductions.'"
Expectations, permanently raised
More than a year on, the flow is steady, and in Brazil the benchmark isn't a fintech, it's Pix. Clients in the region are used to money moving in seconds and expect the same speed and certainty from every payment, cross-border included.
Having pulled settlement down from days to minutes, Ouribank has moved its own bar so far that clients now notice the last remaining gap: "Now, whenever we release payments that take three or four hours to settle, we get calls from the client: 'What's going on? Why aren't you settling my payments in real time?'"
Which is the best kind of complaint to get. The client never asks which rail the money takes from point A to point B, only that it arrives fast and lands clean.
Looking forward
For Sadi, who works with Nium every day, it comes down to something simple, the line the whole partnership rests on:
"It's very easy to work with Nium, it's fast, and we have everything we need. When we have a problem, it's easy to solve. It’s very hard to have something like that with other correspondent banks or correspondent fintechs. Nium is very fast to solve problems and to help us with new corridors."
For a bank whose whole identity is getting there first, turning a Swift message into a local payment is only the opening chapter. Ouribank is already mapping the next ones with Nium. Smarter ACH routing and bringing incoming payments home for Brazil's fast-growing base of creators earning from abroad, for example.
But the chapter Ouribank is most eager to write is the one where the pieces come together: a payment funded in USDC, instructed through the same Swift message its clients already trust, and delivered in real time on the other side.
"There's a lot of things to work on."
In other words, Ouribank and Nium are just getting started.
To learn more about what Ouribank built with with Nium, check out its customer story here >
