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Visa Inc, a major player in the payments industry, has announced its agreement to acquire Pismo, a Brazilian fintech platform, for $1 billion in cash.
This strategic move by Visa aims to expand its presence and operations in Latin America, signaling renewed confidence in the region despite a funding slowdown. The acquisition of Pismo represents the largest fintech exit in Latin America since Nubank's successful initial public offering in late 2021, and it also stands as the biggest disclosed startup exit of the year so far.
This acquisition is Visa's first major takeover since 2021 when it purchased Tink, a European open banking platform, and Currencycloud, a British cross-border payments provider.
Pismo, based in Sao Paulo, operates a cloud-based platform that hosts over 70 million accounts and facilitates more than $200 billion in transactions annually
Earlier this year, there were reports that Mastercard also expressed interest in acquiring Pismo, a banking infrastructure startup. However, Mastercard has not responded to inquiries for comment on the matter.
Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Visa said, “Through the acquisition of Pismo, Visa can better serve our financial institution and fintech clients with more differentiated core banking and issuer solutions they can offer their customers,”
Visa has assured that Pismo will retain its existing management team, and the deal is expected to be finalized by the end of 2023.
The seven-year-old company, with operations in multiple regions including Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, India, and Latin America, has raised over $110 million from investors such as SoftBank Group Corp, Amazon.com Inc, Accel, and Headline, which owns around 30% of the firm.
— Harshita Kumar
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