A look inside Visa’s shareholder presentation for the $5.3B Plaid deal

Fresh off the news yesterday that Visa is buying fintech unicorn Plaid for $5.3 billion, the payments giant is making its case to its shareholders. Given the scale of the deal, and the implied bet that Visa is making on the future of its market, the company prepared a presentation, which means we get to peer into its thinking regarding Plaid itself and the fintech market as a whole.

In a short deck, Visa argues that buying Plaid will: 1) provide it with deep access to an exploding market (fintech), 2) help it boost growth (at a small hit to profits) and 3) provide a means to expand Visa’s total addressable market by building on Plaid’s small customer base, allowing for future growth.

Access to new markets, faster revenue expansion and larger total addressable market (TAM) are pretty good things for any business. Let’s see how Visa makes its case.

Plaid

In Visa’s view, the fintech world’s growth is “very high.” The credit card and payments company reports in its presentation to shareholders that fintech adoption (the percent of “internet enabled customers using at least 1 fintech app”) is growing at a 43% compound rate. Visa also highlights the amount of capital going into the space, namely $120 billion in the last five years.