The American multinational company Visa has announced that it is acquiring the startup Earthport. Specifically, Earthport is one of Ripple's leading partners, creating solutions for ultra-fast money transfers between financial institutions using Ripple's technologies and network. And this is an interesting deal in the fintech startup market. Either the payment giant Visa has decided to cooperate more closely with Ripple, or, on the contrary, it is putting spokes in the wheels of the developing financial technology based on the cryptocurrency XRP.

Interestingly, the deal amounted to 250 million dollars. This means that Visa's management took a desperate step – they paid four times more for the startup's shares than the price at which they were trading on the exchange at the close on December 26. Apparently, the financial giant is very interested in this project. Given that last year the international transfer market grew by 10%, and with the use of cryptocurrency technologies the volume of such operations will continue to increase, this makes sense.