Visa Buys Fintech "Earthport Plc", a Ripple affiliate

The use of blockchain technologies continues to be an area of ​​interest for banks and financial services and Visa has decided to take a step forward and acquire Earthport Plc, a British fintech focused on enabling solutions to international payment via DLT.

Recently, Earthport successfully closed a strategic partnership with Ripple Labs to use its blockchain as a means of delivering value to its customers. This would have allowed them to offer a substantial improvement in the quality of their services.

According to the published cooperation agreement, such was the interest in the acquisition of Earthport that Visa had made an offer four times higher than the quotation of the shares of the fintech on the market. "

"For each action, Earthport held 30 pence in cash

– The Offer valorizes the entire ordinary issued and issued Earthport share capital of approximately £ 198 million on an entirely diluted basis and represents a premium of around:

• 250 percent. the weighted average price for the six-month volume of 8.6 pence for Earthport Share as of December 24, 2018 (being the last business day prior to the date of this announcement); is
• Or 50 percent. the listing of 20 pence per Earthport action on October 4, 2017 "

The Visa team has not provided any broader statements explaining whether there is an explicit interest in exploring the use of the Ripple blockchain as a means of payment, however, nor have they denied the interest in using Ripple as a platform. for processing payments

The history of Visa's relationship with Blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies has had its ups and downs. At the beginning of the year, his CFO had a strong enough position against its use, saying he could bet "Every scammer and every dirty politician in the world … is in cryptocurrency", however, midway through the year, Visa CEO Al Kelly said in a new interview to Jim Cramer of CNBC that, although they did not consider it a threat, Visa would be ready for compatibility with the use of cryptographic coins if necessary.