Visa buys Brazilian fintech Pismo for BRL 4.9 billion – 06/28/2023 – Tech

Visa announced the purchase of Brazilian fintech Pismo for US$ 1 billion (R$ 4.86 billion at current prices) this Wednesday (28). The startup offers cloud processing and banking services in Latin America, Asia, the Pacific and Europe. The transaction was done in cash.

The acquisition contract should be among the most expensive of the year, according to an evaluation by the specialized site TechCrunch. It is also among the most expensive deals in history involving Latin American startups.

Among Pismo’s clients are the Brazilian Itaú, Nubank and the US bank Citi. Pismo has a portfolio of more than 80 million accounts and issues 40 million cards, which transact US$ 40 billion (R$ 194.2 billion) a year.

Pismo accelerates the launch of payments and digital products from a platform of microservices in the cloud built like lego—customers only use what they need. This is done regardless of geographic origin and currency used in the operation, according to fintech chief executive Ricardo Josua in the acquisition statement.

Traditional financial services platforms such as Visa blend local processing software with cloud computing. Service packages also have less flexibility.

The fintech platform will allow Visa to support new payment methods. Visa also plans to use Pismo’s portfolio to issue debit, credit and prepaid cards and perform cloud banking processing.

Pismo has seen rapid growth since a 2021 investment round of $108 million, with money from e-commerce giant Amazon, and venture funds SoftBank and Accel.

At the end of 2020, Pismo served 10 million accounts with transactions of less than $1 billion. Fintech now has an office on Avenida Faria Lima at the end of 2022.

Visa was disputing the startup with Mastercard for the business under the management of Goldman Sachs. The company’s portfolio would accelerate the operation of any giant in the sector, according to the statement of Accel partner Ethan Choi to Tech Crunch.