Visa acquires YellowPepper

The FINANCIAL — Visa Inc. announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire YellowPepper, a fintech pioneer with proprietary technology and partnerships supporting leading financial institutions and startups in Latin America and the Caribbean. The acquisition of YellowPepper builds on a strategic partnership and investment Visa made in YellowPepper in May 2018. The YellowPepper platform offers a rich set of APIs to enable issuers, processors and governments to quickly and securely access multiple payment rails for many payment flows through one single connection.

The acquisition of YellowPepper will accelerate the adoption of Visa’s “network of networks” strategy by significantly reducing the time-to-market and cost for issuers and processors associated with accessing innovative and interoperable solutions, regardless of who owns or operates the payment rails.

“We are extremely excited about our acquisition of YellowPepper and how it enhances the growth trajectory of our business in Latin America and the Caribbean. The acquisition will accelerate Visa’s ability to create innovative and accessible digital payment solutions that empower consumers and businesses, allowing them to thrive socially and economically,” said Eduardo Coello, Regional President for Visa Latin America and the Caribbean. “YellowPepper’s technology, which acts like a ‘universal adapter’, will be key to build on our ’network of networks’ strategy to become a single point of access for initiating any transaction type and enabling the secure movement of money.”

YellowPepper will facilitate an easier integration to Visa Direct, Visa’s real-time push payments platform, Visa B2B Connect, Visa’s non-card-based payment cross-border B2B network, and value added services. Collectively, this will expand digital products and services enablement, provide compelling and safe experiences for the ecosystem, and grow new flow volumes and transactions. For example, earlier this year, Visa and YellowPepper enabled the first real-time platform of its kind in Peru to develop PLIN, a P2P solution with Scotiabank, BBVA, and Interbank. By combining Visa Direct capabilities with YellowPepper’s proprietary Alias Directory, Customer Identity profile and Smart Routing tools, consumers can now use an email, phone number or other personal credential to exchange money via their bank using a payment option of their choice.

“Over the last three years, we have partnered closely with YellowPepper to deliver innovative solutions to clients in the region. As these solutions scale to other markets, aligning more closely with YellowPepper and combining our businesses is a natural extension of our relationship. Together, we can offer a flexible and low-cost platform in order to connect to multiple networks for new flows throughout Latin America and beyond,” said Ruben Salazar, Head of Innovation and Products for Visa Latin America and the Caribbean. “With our acquisition of YellowPepper we will make it easier for clients to enable new use cases and expand our value added services, such as tokenization, multi-rail integration, identity validation, authentication and risk tools to deliver an integrated user experience.”

“YellowPepper’s unique technology platform is modern, interoperable, secure and scalable,” said Serge Elkiner, CEO & Founder of YellowPepper. “Paired together, Visa and YellowPepper can deliver enhanced payment capabilities, providing profound value-added services for issuers, governments and processors in the region. YellowPepper has strived to transform the banking and payments landscape in Latin America over the last 15 years through technology and with the acceleration of digitalization globally and the disappearing of borders, our clients will benefit tremendously from us joining the Visa family,” he added.

YellowPepper will continue to commercially provide its brand-agnostic solutions with CEO Serge Elkiner continuing to lead the YellowPepper team. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close in the next several weeks.