Mastercard is accelerating its open banking strategy through the $825 million acquisition of real-time financial data aggregation service Finicity.
Salt Lake City-based Finicity works with thousands of banks and fintechs, using APIs to help smooth the exchange of customer data.
With open banking seen as a "growing global trend" by Mastercard president Michael Miebach, the payments giant is keen to cash in, adding Finicity’s technology and teams to its platform as it seeks to win over banks and fintechs.
The deal will also be good for consumers and businesses, says Mastercard, helping to streamline the credit decisioning process and providing an improve ACH and real-time payments experience.
The deal comes months after Visa agreed to pay $5.3 billion for Plaid, another bank data sharing startup, which Mastercard has previously invested in.
"With the addition of Finicity, we expect to not only advance our open banking strategy, but enhance how we support and accelerate today’s digital economy across several markets," says Miebach.
As part of the acquisition, expected to close by the end of the year, Finicity’s existing shareholders have the potential for an earn-out of up to an additional $160 million, if performance targets are met.