Microsoft Taps Nuvei for Xbox and Office Payments

Microsoft has launched a partnership with FinTech Nuvei centered around the Middle East and Africa.

The collaboration, announced Monday (Dec. 4), will see the tech giant use Nuvei’s payments technology in that part of the world — along with the Canadian firm’s knowledge of local markets — to optimize recurring billing and individual transactions for Office and Xbox customers.

“Other benefits of Nuvei’s global payments capabilities Microsoft is harnessing include optimized authorization rates through local acquisition and superior risk management that minimize false declines, as well as Nuvei’s ability to offer all of the relevant local alternative payment methods to each market through a single integration,” the companies said in a news release. 

According to the release, the two companies aim to extend their partnership to other markets and to explore other use cases, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365.

“As two innovative, technology-led businesses that provide solutions to many of the leading international brands across the globe, it makes sense to explore how we can work more cooperatively as we grow our commercial relationship,” said Nuvei CEO Philip Fayer.

PYMNTS spoke recently with Ben Weiner, senior vice president and global head of B2B payments at Nuvei, about the key role technical innovations play in shaping B2B payments.

“What makes B2B payments such a great market is the presence of true white space, which is rare in payments today,” Weiner said last month in an interview for the “B2B Payments: Outlook 2024” series. 

“And that white space comes in the form of paper checks converting into electronic forms of payment,” he added. “This really didn’t get a lot of attention in the broader payments ecosystem for many years, due to the sheer amount of complexity and nuance to solve these equations.”

Among the innovations helping evolve B2B payments, Weiner said, is artificial intelligence (AI).

“AI is a great tool for payments companies looking to improve the delivery of workflow mechanisms, data mechanisms, and then augment value added services around the transaction,” he told PYMNTS.

Nuvei’s partnership with Mastercard follows last week’s debut of the company’s card issuing solution, introduced in 30 markets around the globe.

As reported here, the offering lets Nuvei clients provide customers, employees or contractors with both physical and virtual white-labeled cards. Now available across Europe, Nuvei said it intends to expand the program to the U.S., U.K. and Latin America next year.