Visa announces first fintech investment in Brazil

Visa has announced an investment in Brazilian digital payments processing technology platform Conductor as part of a strategy to get closer to the fintech community in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The minority investment is the company's first fintech deal in Brazil and builds on the existing relationship between the companies.

Backed by Riverwood Capital since 2014, Conductor serves retailers, banks and other companies and has a portfolio of about 100 clients and 69 million end customer payment accounts. The firm is connected to more than 135,000 merchant point of sales throughout the country.

The partnership with Visa will see the development of issuer-focused solutions for tokenizing payments via mobile wallets and improving access to Visa APIs.

The companies will also seek to expand the usage of push payments with Visa Direct, and increase acceptance of digital payments among small and medium businesses, among other initiatives.

"Conductor's extensive experience as a technology processing platform with solutions that include mobile and digital payment account software makes them an ideal partner for building a strong payments ecosystem," said Fernando Teles, country manager at Visa Brazil.

"Our partnership is key for the development of new products and solutions that will shape the payments industry in Brazil," Teles added.

Earlier this month, Visa announced it would expand its fast-track onboarding program to fintechs from Latin American and the Caribbean in December 2018 to provide them with the ability to more rapidly onboard to VisaNet, Visa's global network.