Mastercard said that it has received the green light from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to go ahead with its planned acquisition of Utah-based financial data aggregation service provider Finicity.
“We were notified that the Department of Justice completed its review of our planned acquisition of Finicity and has cleared it to move forward,” the payment giant said.
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The deal, announced in June this year, is valued at $825m. It also offers Finicity shareholders the provision to earn up to another $160m on the fulfilment of certain performance targets.
The transaction is aimed at bolstering Mastercard’s open banking push, which is said to be a strategically important area for the firm.
Through the takeover, Mastercard aims to becomes a strong open banking partner for fintechs and financial institutions in North America and other key geographies.
Upon deal completion that is anticipated by the end of this year, Mastercard will use Finicity’s new analytics platforms to streamline credit decisioning for small businesses and consumers.
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By GlobalDataThe payments firm will also integrate its platform with Finicity’s account owner verification tools to ramp up ACH and real-time payments experience.
“The acquisition of Finicity accelerates our open banking strategy and strengthens our ability to offer consumers and businesses more choice in how they pay and how they simplify their lives and maximise their financial relationships,” Mastercard noted.
The deal by Mastercard follows a similar move by rival Visa, which agreed to snap up fintech Plaid for $5.3bn.
Through the deal, announced earlier this year, Visa aims to cooperate more closely with fintechs. The deal was cleared by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) this August.
However, DOJ recently filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block the deal saying that it could negatively impact competition in the payments sector and prevent disruption of Visa’s online debit monopoly.
