Ryan Reynolds Adds Nuvei to His Investment Portfolio

“Deadpool” star Ryan Reynolds has a new role: investor in Canadian FinTech Nuvei.

The actor and Vancouver native announced his support for the company Monday (April 17), the latest in a series of high-profile investments by Reynolds.

“I know about as much about fintech as I did about gin or mobile a few years ago,” he said in a Nuvei press release.

“But Nuvei is impressive. The leadership team is exceedingly intelligent and hard-working and it’s about time a Canadian company got the type of attention American tech companies do.”

The investment came just weeks after Mint Mobile, a wireless provider in which Reynolds held a 25% stake, was purchased by T-Mobile for $1.35 billion. Reynolds also invests in American Aviation Gin and the U.K.’s Wrexham Football Club.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Ryan to the Nuvei family,” Nuvei Chair and CEO Phil Fayer said in the news release.

“We’re a global company but extremely proud of our Canadian roots and values, so to have one of the most internationally recognizable Canadians, as well as an entrepreneur with such renowned business acumen, join our investors is a privilege.”

Reynolds’ likeness was prominently displayed on the Nuvei website Monday, with the payments company featuring him in a series of tongue-in-cheek advertisements.

“For the longest time, American tech companies have gotten all the attention. Why? Because Canadians are terrible at self-promotion,” the actor says in one of the ads, before adding in a whisper, “But not all Canadians.”

Joking aside, Nuvei has been expanding its global reach recently. Last month, the company announced its entry into Australia, part of a wider push into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

As PYMNTS wrote at the time, the company already had a presence in Hong Kong, which serves as a foothold to access the vast Chinese market of around 1.4 billion consumers. And its operations in Singapore helps it reach customers in a host of Southeast Asian countries.

Australia, on the other hand, “is a prospect of a different nature, mostly involving itself and neighboring New Zealand,” we wrote.

Combined, the two countries comprise tens of millions of consumers with heavy digital penetration and a modern national payments infrastructure.

“If you look at Australia today, it’s a singular market,” Nuvei Global Expansion Officer of Digital Payments Praful Morar told PYMNTS.

With with Hong Kong and Singapore moves, he added, “These are strategic points that touch very big regions. If you look at Southeast Asia in its own right, we’re touching a huge population. Same in Hong Kong and Australia. Australia and New Zealand touch around 30 million people.”