Visa and Plaid Terminate Deal; Pakistan Launching New Digital Payments System: News Roundup

PaymentFacilitator’s News Roundup is a curated mix of the past week’s news and articles from around the web, including company announcements, global payments news, and other coverage and analysis of topics relevant to payment facilitators.

Merger & Acquisition News

About a year after the deal was announced, Visa has announced the end of its plans to acquire fintech company Plaid. The U.S. Department of Justice had filed an antitrust lawsuit claiming that the deal would limit competition in the payments industry, eliminating a competitive threat to the card network. Plaid provides APIs that connect fintech startups to users’ bank accounts. From CNBC.

Digital Download

Payments industry players are welcoming the Reserve Bank of India’s Payments Infrastructure Development Fund, which promises to help grow the country’s payments acceptance network. The fund will help subsidize the deployment of payment acquisition channels in less populated regions. The bank has touted the move as a way to grow financial inclusion in those more rural areas. From The Hindu BusinessLine.

Online transactions for Indian PF Razorpay grew 80% last year, the company said. Increased adoption of digital payments in tier II and III cities accounted for much of the growth. While the pandemic lockdown caused digital payments to decline initially, they picked back up when businesses started to recover in the last half of the year. From The New Indian Express.

The State Bank of Pakistan has announced it is launching a new government-run system for instant digital payments, looking to grow financial inclusion there while it collects more taxes. The new system would connect government entities and financial institutions, while previous private systems enable movement of money even without a bank account. From Reuters.