In 2015, 18% of the connected global population was used to count on a financial management app to organize, plan, and control its personal incomes. In only four years, this number jumped to 75% in 2019. This market growth is undeniable and, not by coincidence, it caught Visa‘s attention.
This Monday (13), the payments giant announced the acquisition of Plaid, a company that is responsible for offering safe connections among banking accounts and financial management apps, such as Acorns, Betterment, Chime, Transferwise, and Venmo. The company is currently leading this segment, 1 out of 4 that owns a banking account in the US already used Plaid services to connect its online banking to another app, and Visa paid $ 5,3 billion in the transaction.
“Plaid’s mission is to make the money management easier for everyone and we are excited about the opportunity to keep delivering that promise on a global scale,” said Zach Perret, Plaid’s CEO, and co-founder, in a press release. “Visa is trusted by billions of consumers, businesses, and financial institutions as an essential part of the financial ecosystem. Together, Visa and Plaid can support the fast growth of the digital financial services market.”
Plaid counts on available connections to more than 2.600 fintech apps and 11.000 financial institutions on its portfolio.
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“We are extremely happy with the acquisition of Plaid and how it improves the growth trajectory of our business,” stated Al Kelly, Visa’s CEO and Chairman, in the press release. “The acquisition, combined with our ongoing fintech efforts, positions Visa to add even more value to developers, financial institutions and consumers”.
By joining forces with Visa, the market expects that Plaid’s technology could go even further in improving the product’s data security and connection experience. “We believe Visa’s acquisition of Plaid is an important event in offering consumers more security and more control over how their financial data is used. Protecting customer data and helping them securely share this information has been a top priority for Chase. We look forward to partnering with Visa to continue building a great experience for our mutual customers”, revealed Gordon Smith, JPMorgan Chase‘s co-president and CEO of Consumer and Community Banking, in Visa’s press release.
