Dive Brief:
- Visa plans to purchase Prisma Medios de Pago and Newpay from the private equity firm Advent International in an acquisition agreement that returns the Argentine assets to the card network’s fold. The companies didn’t disclose the financial terms, but said in press releases Thursday that the deal would close by the end of March.
- Visa, which previously owned a stake in the businesses along with 14 Argentine banks, will gain card issuer processing services, a real-time payments system, an ATM network and bill-payment capabilities in Argentina through the acquisition, according to the press release from the card network.
- We see significant opportunities to expand digital payments adoption and modernize financial services, capabilities and infrastructure across the country,” said Visa’s group country manager for Argentina, Gabriela Renaudo, said in the release.
Dive Insight:
Visa’s acquisition includes two parts of the Prisma business that it previously owned with the banks. The card network and the banks sold a 51% stake in the company to Advent in 2019 for $725 million, valuing that portion of the business at $1.42 billion then, according to releases and reports at the time.
Eventually, the rest of the ownership stake was sold to Advent, which broke the Prisma properties up into three businesses. The private equity player, founded in Boston, will retain the third part of the business, which provides merchant acquiring services under the Payway brand, according to Advent’s release.
Visa, the largest U.S. card network, is buying the Argentine properties as it has been increasingly focused on building a presence in South America. The card network bought the Brazilian payments player Pismo, which operates in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Europe, in 2023 for $1 billion and has expanded that cloud-native digital card-issuing and banking services business in the past several years.
“This acquisition is an important step for Visa in Argentina, strengthening our client partnerships and advancing innovation across the payments ecosystem,” Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said in the release.
The San Francisco-based card network is increasingly branching out in the payments sphere to offer related services, including cryptocurrency and stablecoin functions, as well as consulting services, as consumers and businesses embrace digital alternatives to traditional payment options. It’s searching out those opportunities outside its traditional offering as regulatory, legislative and legal challenges threaten its long-established revenue stream from card processing fees.
For instance, last month, a bill offered by a bipartisan set of Congress members known as the Credit Card Competition Act, gained support from President Donald Trump. That legislation, if it were passed, would call on banks that issue credit cards to ensure that merchants had alternatives to Visa, and its rival Mastercard, when processing card payments.
