Expertise meets innovation: Microsoft scales its payment strategy with Nuvei

“Nuvei are one of the best in latency and technology, offering amazing service levels to their customers. That gives us a great foundation to move and expand to new markets in the near future.”

Myladie Stoumbou, Senior Regional Director, Partner Development, Microsoft

Overview

Microsoft’s expansion into emerging markets brought new opportunities - and new challenges. From South Africa to Saudi Arabia, the company needed a partner with deep regional expertise, a cutting-edge tech stack, and the ability to scale alongside one of the world’s most ubiquitous technology brands.

The challenge

Local licensing requirements, infrastructure gaps, and varied consumer preferences made seamless payment enablement a complex barrier to entry. Microsoft wanted a provider who could enable local acquiring in key, emerging markets, initially in South Africa, with the ability to expand globally. In addition to scalability, they had high standards, with requirements including advanced fraud prevention, payment authorization optimization, and a flexible, hands-on, enterprise-grade integration process.  

The solution

With localized acquiring capabilities in many of the world’s high-growth, emerging markets, support for 720+ alternative payment methods and a 24/7 technical support system, Nuvei was a great fit for Microsoft’s ambitions. Following Microsoft’s rigorous vendor selection process, Nuvei has since been able to optimize authorization rates and offer seamless payment experiences for Microsoft customers.  

As a licensed acquirer operating in 200+ markets, Nuvei is helping Microsoft:

• Localize payments: Offering lower, local IC rates by processing in local currencies, reducing friction across markets
• Optimize performance: Navigating a rigorous vetting process, Nuvei passed latency and approval rate benchmarks with flying colors
• Enhance resilience: From pre-emptively contacting issuers to solving real-time payment failures, Nuvei acted as a true extension of Microsoft’s team.

The impact

Microsoft expanded smoothly into South Africa, with strong issuer collaboration enabling an uninterrupted customer service, and consistently high authorization rates.  

Today, Microsoft is using Nuvei’s global platform to support both B2B and B2C use cases, tailored to their regional requirements. The stage is set for the partnership to scale much further, with sights set on a global partnership.  

“I think we're just on the ground floor. We have the ability to expand to more than 200 markets Nuvei services today. The future is bright for this partnership.”

Raphael Tetro, SVP Strategic Accounts, Nuvei

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