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The CMA said it took into account a broad spectrum of evidence, such as internal documents and input from different rivals, clients and retailers. The probe mainly focused on how the arrangement could impact competition in the consumer-to-business (C2B) electronic payments sector in which Visa via card-based payments and Plaid via payment initiation services (PIS) are active.
The watchdog determined that “Plaid would have been an increasing competitive threat to Visa in future, but that it is only one of a number of PIS providers already active in the U.K.” It named Token.io, Tink, Yapily and TrueLayer as other firms “already possessing similar, or stronger, competitive capabilities than Plaid.” “On this basis, the CMA concluded that in the U.K. Visa would continue to face sufficient competition from PIS-enabled payments, and other types of services enabling consumer-to-business payments, after the merger,” the watchdog said.
