The combination of Nuvei’s stablecoin-based settlement and payment orchestration capabilities with Payoneer’s multi-million customer base of freelancer and SMB accounts, accompanied by built-in payout rails in 190+ markets, could create a strong alternative for Visa’s recent stablecoin payouts pilot, enabling businesses and platforms to send payouts directly in USD‑backed stablecoins (such as USDC) to recipients’ stablecoin wallets. Will the companies follow that path?
Today, payment technology companies Nuvei and Payoneer announced a definitive agreement under which Nuvei will acquire all outstanding shares of Payoneer Global Inc. for $7.40 per share in cash, aggregately representing a total equity value of approximately $2.75 billion.
BMO Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets, Barclays, UBS, and Wells Fargo are providing committed financing to this acquisition as well. The companies have not publicly stated a combined valuation of the merged entity. If we take into account that Nuvei was acquired in a take-private transaction valued at roughly $6.3 billion in 2024, that suggests an implied combined equity value of roughly about $9.0 billion. Exact numbers will likely be known closer to the agreement finalization.
At the deal’s close, which is scheduled for around mid-2027 due to the complexity of multi-jurisdictional regulatory clearance for a deal this size, the combined company is expected to generate approximately $3 billion in annual revenue and process more than $500 billion in annual payment volume for more than 2.4 million customers.
Despite the impressive size, the deal is notable in several other ways. First of all, Payoneer’s standalone market capitalization immediately before the deal was only about $2.26 billion, meaning Nuvei is paying a substantial premium and for a good reason.
The combined entity could support customers across all major e-commerce platforms, like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Airbnb, Fiverr, Upwork, Etsy, ByteDance, Shopify, and WooCommerce. That’s a comprehensive footprint across the dominant global marketplace rails, which is exactly where cross-border SMB payment volume lies.
Besides, Payoneer holds multiple regulatory authorizations across major jurisdictions, including an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a cross-border payment aggregator. In China, the company has become the third foreign payment platform licensed to provide online payment services after its 2025 acquisition of Easylink Payment. These types of cross-border regulatory approvals are notoriously hard to obtain, so having those on board is a solid benefit for cross-border payment infrastructure expansion.
In a LinkedIn post, John Caplan, CEO of Payoneer, commented:
“Nuvei has built one of the world’s leading platforms for accepting and processing payments, with exceptional global reach, technology and execution. Together, we’re bringing highly complementary capabilities to the market and creating something far bigger than either company could build alone.”
The transaction is also specifically framed as strengthening Nuvei’s ability to support agentic commerce, stablecoin payments, and platform-native financial services. Though Payoneer does not provide stablecoin or agentic payments services at present, it has something more important – rails that can facilitate those functions. Just as discussed at Money20/20 Europe this year, while the overall importance of stablecoins is significant, the rails they function on will far outweigh their importance over time.
Nuvei already offers stablecoin payment and settlement capabilities and has been actively involved in industry efforts to develop agentic-commerce payment standards. Meanwhile, Payoneer brings complementary cross-border payout, treasury and multi-currency infrastructure, helping extend those capabilities beyond payment acceptance into global settlement and fund movement.
In this context, we arrive to one of the important capabilities these two partners can potentially unlock: stablecoin payouts to suppliers, freelancers, marketplace sellers, and so on, with the opportunity to cash out in multiple local fiat currencies. Payoneer essentially provides businesses with a global financial account infrastructure and payout network that waits only for stablecoins and AI agents to be added to the stack. This opportunity is a very promising one and other industry players like Visa have already moved in that direction.
Thus, last November, Visa announced a pilot Visa Direct stablecoin payouts project enabling businesses and platforms to send payouts directly in USD‑backed stablecoins (such as USDC) to recipients’ stablecoin wallets. According to research cited by Visa, 57 % of digital creators say faster access to funds is the primary reason they choose digital payment methods, underscoring the demand driving this initiative. The same situation is true for freelancers and other gig economy participants, including part-time sellers at major marketplaces. Among active crypto users, 39% prefer to receive income in stablecoins (including salaries, freelance pay, cross-border work or sales).
The article was updated on June 16, 2026, with the commentary of John Caplan, CEO of Payoneer
