Fintech

Visa is buying Tink for $2.2 billion

Just five months after the Plaid deal didn't work out.

Visa payment
Image: Roy Rochlin / Getty Images

Visa announced Thursday that it's buying Tink, the Swedish open-banking fintech, for $2.2 billion. The deal comes five months after regulatory pressure led Visa to ditch its $5.3 billion deal to buy Plaid.

Tink helps banks and fintechs connect to each other, allowing them to use an API to build open-banking tools like personal finance management apps and account verification. European open-banking regulation in the aftermath of the financial crisis made this a major growth area for fintechs, and similar legislation is under consideration in the U.S.

For Visa, Tink could offer another chance at becoming a key fintech player. In a recent interview with Protocol, Visa global head of fintech Terry Angelos said that fintech was "one of the biggest growth engines" for the company. Tink could also help Visa better compete with Mastercard, which bought Plaid and Tink competitor Finicity last year.

The deal still has to be approved by regulators, though — and as the Plaid deal showed, there's no guarantee that will happen.

Shakeel Hashim

Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a former growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

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The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

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Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

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Enterprise

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Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

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Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

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Farewell from Protocol

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

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Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

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Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

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