Visa Outpaces Mastercard in Race to Acquire Pismo, Eyeing Greater Support for Emerging Payment Rails

Visa Inc V agreed to acquire Pismo, a cloud-native issuer processing and core banking platform with operations in Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Europe, for $1 billion in cash.

Pismo is a Brazilian cloud-based payment and banking platform provider.

The acquisition will position Visa to provide core banking and issuer processing capabilities across debit, prepaid, credit, and commercial cards for clients via cloud-native APIs. 

Pismo's platform will also enable Visa to provide support and connectivity for emerging payment rails, like Pix in Brazil, for financial institution clients.

Pismo will retain its current management team. The transaction will likely close by the end of 2023.

"At Pismo, we aim to enable our clients to launch cutting-edge payments and banking products within a single cloud-native platform – regardless of rails, geography, or currency. Visa provides us unrivaled support to expand our footprint globally and help shape a new era for banking and payments," said Ricardo Josua, Co-Founder, and CEO, of Pismo.

Mastercard Inc MA and Visa were among the firms contending to acquire Pismo. Visa held $19.4 billion in cash and equivalents as of March 31.

Price Action: V shares traded lower by 0.27% at $227.34 premarket on the last check Thursday.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons