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by gervase 2557 days ago
If it fails, they lose their investment, which I believe was only on the order of double-digit millions, which is nothing to Visa. If it succeeds with their investment, they have a tiny amount of leverage. If it succeeds without their investment, they have no leverage at all.

A $10MM investment as a hedge against that outcome makes a lot of business sense, from a risk mitigation standpoint. The size of the investment is also indicative of their relative confidence that it will succeed - if they were sure that it would succeed and supplant their core business, they'd probably be investing a lot more.