My Say: Acquisitions are fuelling ‘buy now, pay later’ and other payment trends

BNPL deals represented 50% of the value of all payment deals in 2021, a boom year for M&A in payments. Visa and Mastercard diversify beyond cardsMeanwhile, payments companies must deal with the prospect of more consumers using digital and account-to-account payments. Visa has been pushing into consumer and business payments and extending into account-based payments. The company made two major acquisitions in 2021 — European open banking platform Tink and cross-border payments platform CurrencyCloud. Similarly, in the Philippines, UnionBank purchased Citi’s consumer business to boost growth in its retail banking sector.