Ryan Reynolds takes stake in Canadian payments firm Nuvei

FINANCIAL technology firm Nuvei, a provider of payments services to the sports betting industry, announced an investment from Hollywood actor and investor Ryan Reynolds.

The company and Reynolds didn’t disclose the amount. Nuvei shares rose as much as 1.6 per cent before giving up those gains to trade down 0.7 per cent at 10:27 am in Toronto.

Reynolds also did a marketing pitch for Nuvei. On Twitter, he posted a video in which he sits on chief executive officer Philip Fayer’s desk and pokes fun at his low profile compared with US technology executives.

The company, founded in Montreal in 2003, offers a payments platform for businesses in close to 50 countries. It offers services to clients from the gaming and crypto industries, including DraftKings and Binance Holdings.

“I know about as much about fintech as I did about gin or mobile a few years ago,” Reynolds said in a news 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.”

Reynolds backed budget wireless provider Mint Mobile, which last month agreed to a sale to T-Mobile US for as much as US$1.35 billion.

Fayer’s company went public in 2020 amid a soaring demand for technology stocks during the first year of the pandemic, and the next year it briefly crossed C$25 billion (S$24.9 billion) in market value. But it slumped after it was the subject of a critical report by short-seller Spruce Point Capital Management and in the broader tech correction. It’s now worth about C$8 billion.

In February, Nuvei closed a US$1.3 billion acquisition of Atlanta-based Paya Holdings, which provides payment solutions in the health care, education, government and nonprofit sectors. BLOOMBERG