Visa completes pending acquisition of Currencycloud
Visa has finally completed the acquisition of Currencycloud, which is one of the largest platforms that help with foreign exchange payments for banks and other financial services entities that work with cross-border payments.
The companies have been having different kinds of partnerships in 2019 and this acquisition deal was completed in July of this year and it values the company at $700 million.
Strategic Acquisition
This is likely to be a strategic acquisition for Visa as it looks to expand on its cross-border payment services and also looks for ways to cut down the costs involved so that it can pass on some of those benefits to the users and also expand on its platform offerings in the long run.
The main focus of Currencycloud has been the banks and other financial institutions to whom they have been offering a large set of APIs using which the firms would be able to handle cross-border transactions in a much easier and cheaper manner. The APIs also help with real-time notifications, multi-currency wallets, and virtual account management as well.
On the acquisition, Mike Laven, CEO of Currencycloud, stated: “As we continue to execute on the strategy that got us this far, with the additional strength of Visa’s global network behind us, we expect to be able to move further, faster – expanding our offering, extending our global footprint and identifying and supporting new audiences.”
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Eke Out Savings on Transaction Costs
With the advent of digital payment, cross-border payments have also become very easy and cheap especially with the use of blockchain and crypto. Every dollar saved would be useful for the financial firms involved and this is why we are seeing the continued focus on such cross-border payments despite the competition in this space. Currencycloud has been able to stand out among these because it was one of the very early entrants into the industry and its APIs are easy to use.
It is reported that the company has over 500 clients spread over 180 countries and that it processes over $5 billion worth of cross-border transactions every month. It will be interesting to see how Visa would be using the network and infrastructure of the company to further build on its services and how it can eke out the savings from this deal so that it would benefit its end users.
