Visa Inc. announced signing a definitive agreement for the acquisition of YellowPepper, fintech firm supporting financial institutions and startups in Latin America and the Caribbean through its partnerships.
Visa made a strategic partnership and investment in YellowPepper in May 2018 and the acquisition builds on that. YellowPepper’s platform provides issuers, processors and governments with a range of APIs that will allow them to quickly and securely access multiple payment rails for many payment flows through one connection.
The acquisition of YellowPepper will stimulate and advance the adoption of Visa’s “network of networks” strategy. It will noticeably reduce the time-to-market and cost associated with accessing innovative and interoperable solutions, regardless of who owns or operates the payment rails.
Eduardo Coello, Regional President for Visa Latin America and the Caribbean said:
We are extremely excited about our acquisition of YellowPepper and how it enhances the growth trajectory of our business in Latin America and the Caribbean. The acquisition will accelerate Visa’s ability to create innovative and accessible digital payment solutions that empower consumers and businesses, allowing them to thrive socially and economically. YellowPepper’s technology, which acts like a ‘universal adapter’, will be key to build on our ’network of networks’ strategy to become a single point of access for initiating any transaction type and enabling the secure movement of money.
YellowPepper will assist with easing the integration to Visa Direct, the real-time push payments platform Visa B2B Connect, Visa’s non-card-based payment cross-border B2B network and value added services. This will expand the digital products and services, provide safe experiences for the ecosystem and grow new flow volumes and transactions. The combination of Visa Direct capabilities with YellowPepper’s Alias Directory, Customer Identity profile and Smart Routing tools allows consumers to use an email, phone number or other personal credential to exchange money via their bank using a payment option of their choice.
Ruben Salazar, Head of Innovation and Products for Visa Latin America and the Caribbean noted:
Over the last three years, we have partnered closely with YellowPepper to deliver innovative solutions to clients in the region. As these solutions scale to other markets, aligning more closely with YellowPepper and combining our businesses is a natural extension of our relationship. Together, we can offer a flexible and low-cost platform in order to connect to multiple networks for new flows throughout Latin America and beyond. With our acquisition of YellowPepper we will make it easier for clients to enable new use cases and expand our value added services, such as tokenization, multi-rail integration, identity validation, authentication and risk tools to deliver an integrated user experience.
Serge Elkiner, CEO & Founder of YellowPepper commented:
YellowPepper’s unique technology platform is modern, interoperable, secure and scalable. “Paired together, Visa and YellowPepper can deliver enhanced payment capabilities, providing profound value-added services for issuers, governments and processors in the region. YellowPepper has strived to transform the banking and payments landscape in Latin America over the last 15 years through technology and with the acceleration of digitalization globally and the disappearing of borders, our clients will benefit tremendously from us joining the Visa family.
CEO Serge Elkiner will continue to lead the YellowPepper team. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the next several weeks.
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