Bulletins

Visa ditches $5.3 billion plan to buy Plaid

Visa said Tuesday it is giving up its plan to buy fintech startup Plaid for $5.3 billion, citing a "protracted and complex" legal battle with the Justice Department.

Visa unveiled its plan to buy the infrastructure company, which helps consumers and businesses connect financial data to apps and services, in January 2020. But the Justice Department sued to block the deal saying it would hurt competition.

"We are confident we would have prevailed in court as Plaid's capabilities are complementary to Visa's, not competitive," Visa CEO Al Kelly said in a statement on Tuesday. "However, it has been a full year since we first announced our intent to acquire Plaid, and protracted and complex litigation will likely take substantial time to fully resolve."

Plaid board member Mary Meeker affirmed the board's support for CEO Zach Perret, saying in a statement, "We are confident in Zach and the team's ability to lead Plaid as the digitization of finance continues, and we support the company's decision to pursue an independent path in order to fully realize the potential ahead."

Benjamin Pimentel

Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.

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