A big acquisition happened in fintech this week. Visa bought Plaid, a startup that develops financial APIs, for $5.3 billion, in a deal that effectively doubled Plaid’s last private valuation.
A refresher on Plaid: It’s kind of like Stripe, but instead of helping individuals send and receive payments online, it helps applications (like Venmo,
Acorns,
Robinhood,
Coinbase and
Gemini) connect with users’ bank accounts. 25% of people who have bank accounts in the U.S. have reportedly connected to the service (through an app like Venmo).
According to
a blog post from Plaid CEO Zach Perret, the company will continue to operate as an independent business unit under Visa.
“We were very impressed by the Visa team from the minute they approached us. They share our vision for the future of financial services and have deep respect for the developer community we support.” - Zach
According to Visa’s
deck on the acquisition, they are hot on the fintech sector. Some notable launches in fintech we’ve seen over the past year (in case you’re looking, Visa):
💸
Atom Finance is like Bloomberg Terminal, but for free
💸
Stripe Capital offers instant loans to customers
💸
Coin Assistant is the “Venmo of crypto”
💸
Lannister is an encrypted personal wealth manager
For a lot more fintech products, go here.
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