Visa is acquiring Brazilian payments infrastructure startup Pismo for $1 billion in cash

Pismo processes almost 50 billion API calls and $40 billion in transaction volumes annually, and powers almost 80 million accounts and over 40 million issued cards. At the beginning of 2021, the start-up was doing less than $1 billion per month in transaction volume., according to techcrunch.com

Visa today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pismo, a cloud-native issuer processing and core banking platform with operations in Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe, for $1 billion in cash.

„By acquiring Pismo, Visa will be positioned to provide core banking and issuer processing capabilities across debit, prepaid, credit and commercial cards for clients via cloud native APIs. Pismo’s platform will also enable Visa to provide support and connectivity for emerging payment rails, like Pix in Brazil, for financial institution clients.” – the company explains.

“Through the acquisition of Pismo, Visa can better serve our financial institution and fintech clients with more differentiated core banking and issuer solutions they can offer their customers,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa.

„At Pismo, we aim to enable our clients to launch cutting-edge payments and banking products within a single cloud-native platform – regardless of rails, geography or currency. Visa provides us unrivalled support to expand our footprint globally and help shape a new era for banking and payments,“ said Ricardo Josua, Co-Founder, CEO, Pismo.

Pismo will retain its current management team. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of 2023.

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Pismo is a technology company with deep experience developing and implementing banking and cards solutions for digital banks and large financial institutions. The company has operations in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company’s investors include Redpoint eventures, Softbank, Amazon and Accel.

Founded in 2016 by Juliana Motta (CPO), Ricardo Josua (CEO), Daniela Binatti (CTO), and Marcelo Parise (VP of engineering), São Paulo–based Pismo has quietly racked up a list of big-name customers, including Citi, Itaú (one of Brazil’s largest banks), Revolut, N26, Nubank and Cora.