Visa Inc said on Thursday it had agreed a 1.8 billion euro ($2.2 billion) takeover of European open banking platform Tink, months after it ditched a planned acquisition of the startup’s U.S. rival Plaid, adding to the growing trend of acquisitions and partnership in the fintech industry.

Founded in 2012, Sweden-based Tink enables banks and other financial firms to share and access consumer financial data more easily. It is used by more than 3,400 banks and other institutions, as well as over 250 million customers in Europe.

Visa terminated a planned $5.3 billion deal with U.S. data-sharing platform Plaid in January, following a U.S. government lawsuit aimed at blocking the deal on antitrust grounds.

European Union rules on open banking require banks to allow access to customer data by registered third party providers to boost competition.

The rollout of the rules has provided fertile ground for fintechs, such as Tink, which provide technology to help third parties and banks to access customer data.

Some financial technology experts said the Tink acquisition could face antitrust concerns, similar to the failed Plaid deal.

“Europe is a very different open banking market to the USA,” said Simon Taylor, head of ventures and co-founder at fintech consultancy 11:FS. “But Tink is one of the largest players, and many of the concerns that led to the investigation into the Plaid-Visa deal may apply here.”

The deal is part of Visa’s push to diversify revenues beyond credit card payments, where it is one of the world’s dominant players. Card companies have been facing increased pressure from regulators on fees, especially in Europe.

Also Read | Visa moves to allow payment settlements using cryptocurrency

If completed, the transaction could mark another success for Sweden’s financial technology startup sector which has created several large companies over the past few years.

Buy now pay later company Klarna was valued at $46 billion in its latest fundraising round earlier this month, while Payments startup iZettle was acquired by PayPal Holdings Inc for $2.2 billion in 2018.

“With Tink and iZettle, Sweden has now produced two of Europe’s largest ever fintech M&A exits,” said Josh Bell, general partner at Dawn Capital, a venture capital firm who backed both firms.

The payment industry has become one of the fastest growing sectors, opening a huge market that has riled players, competing for huge shares, up. Among the leaders in the industry is Stripe, who in the last couple of months had expanded its payment territories globally, through partnership and acquisition of fintech startups, including Nigeria’s Paystack.

Visa’s move to acquire Tink underscores the competitiveness of the fintech market, and how the big names are flexing their financial muscle to stay ahead.

Let me join the world to congratulate my studentship mentor and senior in Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO),  Kingsley Fregene: “Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Chief Engineer Kingsley Fregene has joined the ranks of a select group of only 23 U.S. researchers recognized as pioneers in control practice.

“Kingsley was awarded the annual Control Engineering Practice Award by the American Automatic Control Council in late May 2021 for his work on autonomous control of unmanned vehicle systems in the early part of the last decade”.

Like I told FUTO students during the 2019 Commencement Speech that someone who studied in this very school is one of the best in the world. Some of us who attended FUTO in his generation know that Fregene is peerless.

Congratulations Fregene; FUTO, Nigeria and Africa congratulate.

The 2021 Tekedia Mini-MBA Innovation Week has been scheduled for Nov 22-27, 2021. The sub-theme is Growth Makers, and it is packaged within the Tekedia Mini-MBA theme of Innovation, Growth and Business Execution. All participants of Tekedia programs (mini-MBA, CollegeBoost, advanced diploma, etc) in 2021 qualify to attend free.

Meanwhile, we have opened registration for the next edition of Tekedia Mini-MBA (Sept 13- Dec 6, 2021). Register now to join the edition which will begin on Sept 13, and get many early benefits including attending Tekedia Career Week and Tekedia Innovation Week at no extra cost.

2021 Tekedia Career Week “Nurturing Innovators” Will Hold Oct 25-30, 2021

It is always a privilege when your professors call you. The biggest one was when Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO) asked me to deliver the University Public Lecture, the zenith of any academic gathering. So, it was another moment when Nigeria Computer Society sent an invitation for me to deliver this year’s keynote speech. The theme is “Innovative Systems for Digital Economy”.

I plan to go very technical to inspire our young people. There is a project we are working on here in Silicon Valley in a startup I am serving as a technical design mentor. The young people are building systems that use less power, hoping to make “electronics” that last longer on a single charge.

To do that, they are building a new computational paradigm, mimicking human biology and synaptic plasticity in the construct of the event-driven asynchronous parallelism in the human central nervous system. If that happens, electronics like phones will run longer and we will use less energy: that is innovation for the future.

So, mark the date: Aug 3-5 2021. It would be a great talk.

My keynote at 2021  Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition this week. I spoke on the theme – “Building a New Africa with AI & Blockchain”.  I spoke on June 22, 2021.

Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition is Africa’s premier consumer technology show which holds annually. It provides the perfect platform to showcase your brand and enhance your reputation. It presents to its participants a major opportunity for unrivalled networking and privileged access to strategic partners, investors and potential buyers.