Last week, a deal that Forbes called one of the largest in fintech fell through due to the very high price / earnings multiple for a private company. Visa was going to buy the startup Plaid for $ 5.3 billion – about 35 times higher than its revenue in 2019, which is estimated at $ 100-200 million.
– –
But she changed her mind. The reason was the US Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit filed in November last year. Officials believed that Plaid could eventually prove to be a serious competitor to Visa. If the payment giant now absorbs it, it will take another step towards monopolizing the online debit payments market.
– –
Plaid releases software that allows Internet companies to link a customer’s bank account to a customer’s profile and quickly check if they have the required amount of funds. In the United States, this solved a number of problems at once. For example, to verify an account, companies had to deposit a few cents into the client’s bank account and ask him to check in his personal account in a few days if the payment was made. Due to the complexity of this procedure, many refused to install the application even at the stage of registering an account, explains Forbes.
– – .
