Visa, a payments technology company, failed to acquire Plaid, an American fintech company, for $5.3bn. Visa intended to fund the transaction from cash on hand and debt issuance at the appropriate time. The US Justice Department had sued to stop the deal in November, saying that Visa was a a monopolist in online debit transactions and that the proposed acquisition would eliminate a nascent competitive threat to that monopoly. The deal, which was proposed in January 2020, was scrapped to avoid protracted litigation, said Al Kelly, Visa Chairman and CEO.