Mastercard and Visa square off to acquire Brazilian fintech Pismo (TWIF 4/2)

The sun-drenched Americana of Japanese artist Hiroshi Nagai

Hello Fintech Friends,

🎙️ This week for Hey Fintech Friends, our host Helen Femi interviewed Commerce VC’s Vivek Krishnamurthy. Come give it a listen on Spotify or Apple!

🌲 Also this week, AWS’ FinTech Africa Accelerator opened applications to take part in an equity-free program focused on supporting early stage startups.

📚 Hope you have some Sunday reading time reserved, because we have a lotttt of deeper reads this week.

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Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below.

Source: The Thesis Driving M13's Fintech Investment Strategy

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Zenus Bank, a Puerto Rican digital bank, acquired Financial Urban Exchange, a real-time payments provider for the Caribbean.
Payments hardware builder Ingenico, which is responsible for most of the payments terminals that consumers interact with on a day-to-day basis, acquired Phos, a software that turns smartphones into merchant payment acceptance hardware.
UK small business-focused payments firm Equals Group acquired Belgian licensed payments institution Oonex for £4.1 million to move into Europe.
Mastercard and Visa are both reportedly looking to acquire Brazilian banking and payments startup Pismo for between $1 and $1.4 billion.
French private equity firm Advent launched a sale process for its biometrics payment portfolio company IDEMIA, expected to be valued between $5.4 and $6.5 billion.
Blackbaud, which provides payment software for nonprofits, rejected a $1.1 billion acquisition offer by private equity firm Clearlake.
New tech consultancy VeUP acquired the product suite of UK fintech company M3 Payments.
Market news and information provider Investing.com announced its acquisition of Streetinsider, which provides breaking news on equities, for $10 million.
United Fintech, a British roll-up of capital markets fintech products, is spinning off its Cobalt business into separate foreign exchange and digital currency businesses.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

The shares of Chinese state-owned bank Postal Savings Bank rose after state-owned telco China Mobile announced that it will acquire a stake worth $6.5 billion.
International megabank Standard Chartered agreed to sell its Jordanian and Arab business to Arab Jordan Investment Bank.
Private equity firms Bajaj Finance Ltd. and Cathay Financial Holding Co. are both weighing putting in bids for Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Indonesian business.

One of these trend lines is not like the others... pic.twitter.com/0zD6bcBnhB
— Nik (@NikMilanovic) March 27, 2023

This week for the Fintech Frontlines, we highlight Sophie Schulman, Global Business Development for @Visa. Sophie is building fintech partnership to optimize social commerce, gaming, online checkout, and data for better payments experiences. Congrats on the recognition! pic.twitter.com/C6FjhphPPd
— This Week in Fintech (@twifintech) March 30, 2023

Source: The Fintech Blueprint

This week for the Builders Series, we highlight @tlaltweets at @Intuit Ventures and Co-Founder of @VcUnleashed. Tanvi is a fintech investor and community leader who is deeply committed to increasing access for underrepresented people into the venture ecosystem. pic.twitter.com/PUNagMzvOs
— This Week in Fintech (@twifintech) March 31, 2023