Plaid: Visa’s pricey bet on the future of finance
Visa has paid $5.3bn for fintech start-up Plaid, following on from last year’s purchase of cross-border payments company Earthport.
Visa has bought fintech start-up Plaid for a “whopping” $5.3bn, says Rey Mashayekhi in Fortune Magazine. Plaid has become an “indispensable piece of the fintech ecosystem”, helping connect one in four people with a US bank account to thousands of apps and services, including Venmo and Robinhood.
Visa hopes that Plaid’s technology will help flesh out its “non-card and [real-time] payments” services and this acquisition follows on from last year’s purchase of cross-border payments company Earthport.
Visa’s bet on Plaid is definitely “expensive”, but expensive “doesn’t mean wrong”, says Telis Demos in The Wall Street Journal. After all, while the use of credit and debit cards is growing, there is also a future “that doesn’t look so card-centric”, or in which “non-card payments grow even faster, especially globally”.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
In any case, buying Plaid can help Visa “push its existing payment tools to more customers, but also tap into growth of other networks and movements of money”.
Visa may be right to be worried by the fact that direct transfers between bank accounts using fintech apps “can bypass the traditional payments infrastructure and might over time pose a threat to Visa”, says Liam Proud on Breakingviews.
Still, its decision to pay billions for a firm that will only boost revenue by $100m a year suggests that “profiting from the fears of rich behemoths can be good business”. The big winners from all of this are likely to be Plaid’s rivals, such as PayPal’s Tink, who can now expect to command a “high valuation” from other firms worried about the future of finance.
Sign up to Money Morning
Our team, led by award winning editors, is dedicated to delivering you the top news, analysis, and guides to help you manage your money, grow your investments and build wealth.
Ben studied modern languages at London University's Queen Mary College. After dabbling unhappily in local government finance for a while, he went to work for The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh. The launch of the paper's website, scotsman.com, in the early years of the dotcom craze, saw Ben move online to manage the Business and Motors channels before becoming deputy editor with responsibility for all aspects of online production for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News websites, along with the papers' Edinburgh Festivals website.
Ben joined MoneyWeek as website editor in 2008, just as the Great Financial Crisis was brewing. He has written extensively for the website and magazine, with a particular emphasis on alternative finance and fintech, including blockchain and bitcoin.
As an early adopter of bitcoin, Ben bought when the price was under $200, but went on to spend it all on foolish fripperies.
-
Energy bills to rise by 1.2% in January 2025
Energy bills are set to rise 1.2% in the New Year when the latest energy price cap comes into play, Ofgem has confirmed
By Dan McEvoy Published
-
Should you invest in Trainline?
Ticket seller Trainline offers a useful service – and good prospects for investors
By Dr Matthew Partridge Published