Ryan Reynolds latest brand quest? Canadian payment tech company Nuvei

by David Brown

We know he’s good with gin and telecom brands, and he also seems pretty good at professional soccer. But what can Ryan Reynolds do with a global payments technology company that offers “modular, flexible and scalable technology”? We’re about to find out.

The Canadian entrepreneur, marketer (and actor) has acquired a stake in Montreal-based Nuvei, which specializes in crypto and “more than 600 alternative payment methods,” particularly in the gaming industry, according to Bloomberg.

Started in 2003, the company went public in 2020. It had a market value of $25 million during the early pandemic surge in tech stocks, though it has since dropped to about $8 billion Canadian.

While the release announcing the deal didn’t disclose what, if any, active role Reynolds will assume with Nuvei, he has already done what he does best—produced a series of branded videos for the company.

Each video employs the familiar style and attitude he’s used in other ad campaigns—produced either by himself or his production company Maximum Effort—that helped build and sell Aviation Gin to Diageo for an estimated $610 million and, more recently, Mint Mobile to T-Mobile for $1.35 billion. Reynolds and actor Rob McElhenney are also owners of Welsh soccer team Wrexham AFC.

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

In each of the videos, Reynolds talks directly to camera and uses sometimes pointed and sometimes self-deprecating humour to announce his investment and explain the company.

The connecting theme of all three videos (see two of them below) is that as a Canadian tech company, Nuvei is different from an American or global tech company. The videos lean into Canadian clichés (such as using “aboot” rather than “about”) but are delivered with Reynolds’ trademark arch delivery.

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

David Brown