Advent , an American private equity firm, landed in Latin America 30 years ago. And since then, unlike many of its peers, it has continued investing in the region, even in the face of the usual local adversities. And it is reaping the rewards of this bet.
The most recent example of this persistence – and the returns it has generated – came from one of the countries that faced the most turbulence during this period: Argentina . On February 19, the asset manager announced the sale of Prisma and Newpay, subsidiaries of the Prisma Group, a payment processing company, to Visa .
Advent retained 100% of Payway, Prisma's acquiring arm. The financial terms of the two sales were not disclosed. But the newspaper Clarín reported that the assets were valued at approximately US$1.5 billion, a good indication of the magnitude of the deal.
“The deal proved that our thesis is very solid,” Juan Pablo Zucchini, managing partner of Advent, told NeoFeed . “We have a lot of local knowledge, which helps us isolate ourselves from the macroeconomic climate, focus on the fundamentals of the business, and understand if we have a great opportunity ahead.”
Prisma perfectly illustrates Advent's thesis. The investment firm took control of the company in early 2019. A major player in payment processing in Argentina, the company was, at the time, owned by the country's 14 largest banks.
Three years later, in the first quarter of 2022, the asset manager bought the remaining 49% of these institutions. According to Clarín , the two tranches involved an investment of just over US$1 billion, a figure that is not confirmed by Zucchini.
He doesn't hide, however, what caught his attention about the asset. Starting with the sector in which it operates – since 2008, Advent has invested US$9.4 billion globally in 18 payment companies. And also because of Prisma's weight in the local market and its infrastructure – with few parallels in the region.
“We have what we call a 'gem list' of companies in Latin America, and Prisma was on it,” says Zucchini. “There was a great opportunity for value creation in the company. And in a sector that is very defensive against inflation and quite resilient to economic volatility.”
One of the issues that marked the analysis of the investment in the group was a study involving local economists. The central theme? Argentina's macroeconomic cycles over the previous 50 years.
“We were prepared for the worst-case scenarios. Nothing pointed to that, but we wanted to be cautious,” says Zucchini. “At that time, we had the government of Mauricio Macri, inflation under control, at around 2% per month. High inflation or a significant devaluation of the currency were not possibilities.”
However, what followed the first investment in Prisma proved this caution worthwhile. Impacted by unfulfilled promises, including controlling inflation, which surged again, Macri was defeated by Alberto Fernández, who assumed the presidency of Argentina at the end of 2019. And the situation worsened.
“To give you an idea of the scale, the accumulated inflation between our first investment in Prisma in 2019 and 2025 was 3,515%,” says Zucchini. “And the accumulated currency devaluation was 2,505%.”
He emphasizes that, in this trajectory, the toughest chapters were the years 2020 to 2022, which combined high inflation, a "violent" devaluation of the currency, exchange controls, and low Argentine GDP growth. "2021 was the worst year in Prisma's history," he states.
However, it was precisely after that "forgettable" year that Advent decided to buy the remaining 49% stake in the group. At this point, Zucchini draws on investments made in the Brazilian market to reinforce the firm's approach.
“We invested, for example, in Grupo CRM during the pandemic, when the company was struggling,” he says. “These are times when many foreign investors would hesitate to invest, precisely because they lack local knowledge.”
Advent took control of Grupo CRM , owner of Kopenhagen, in 2020. It sold the operation three years later in a deal whose value was not disclosed, but which was estimated at the time to be over R$4 billion.
Aside from the challenges
In the case of Prisma, in a path towards a sale that, by all indications, also involved a billion-dollar figure, Advent implemented a series of measures to add value to the operation, apart from rampant inflation and all sorts of macroeconomic adversities during its six years at the helm of the company.
This plan gained momentum, particularly after the management company acquired 100% of the company. It included investments in technology, digitization of offerings, and the creation of a sales force – until then, the group's products and services were sold by banks.
The package also included the launch or improvement of products – such as financing operations for retailers, in the form of receivables discounting. Many of these initiatives involved consultants from Europe and the USA.
On the other hand, Advent concentrated the management of the operation in a committee formed by three executives. Among them was Zucchini himself, with weekly meetings to monitor the progress of the business.
The main measure, however, was the separation of the group into three companies: Prisma, for card processing; Newpay, for infrastructure for various payment methods; and Payway, for acquiring services, which also operates more than 7,000 ATMs in the Banelco network.
“With this separation, we were able to monitor and track the development of each independent business,” he says. “We also understood – and this has now been proven true – that we were increasing our sales optionality, with different parties interested in each business unit.”
He highlights some indicators to emphasize the evolution of these operations. Prisma, for example, closed 2025 with 5 billion processed transactions and the management of 75 million cards. From 2022 to last year, the company's transaction volume had a compound annual growth rate of 13.1%.
Newpay ended the year with 3.4 billion processed transactions and US$14 billion in bill payments. The volume of instant payment transactions registered a compound annual increase of 61.6% during the same period.
“Since 2022, the group’s EBITDA has quadrupled,” he states. Payway, which remains in Advent’s portfolio, is projected to reach a TPV of $52 billion in 2025, through a base of 370,000 retail customers.
“Today, Payway is a consolidated company and the largest acquiring company in Argentina. In absolute terms, this operation represented about half of the group,” he notes. “And we still see a lot of opportunity in this operation.”
Payway is currently Advent's only investment in Argentina. However, the outlook is that this local portfolio could grow again, largely due to the firm's somewhat more favorable view of the current president Javier Milei's government.
“He managed to stabilize the economy, and that created a positive investment moment in the country,” he says. “We don’t have a pre-allocation by market, but we’ve started looking more intensely at Argentina than we did before, especially in the financial sector, industry, and consumption.”
