Global Payments offers all-in merchant services. The Atlanta-based fintech company announced Thursday it will acquire WorldPay in a $22.7 billion transaction from FIS and private equity company GTCR.
The move comes just two years after global payments acquired payments from small rival EVOs in a $4 billion transaction, indicating a clear strategy to proactively scale through integration.
As part of the transaction, global payments cut slow-moving issuer solutions units and sell to FIS for $13.5 billion. This sale clears the way to free up capital and focus on e-commerce and enterprise payments.
With the merger, global payments will provide a total of over 6 million customers, processing 94 billion transactions per year in over 175 countries, and processing a total of $3.7 trillion in payments. The move is positioned to take on heavyweights such as Stripe, Paypal, Adien, Fisolve and Block.
“This transaction provides one of the world’s most feature-rich platforms to support e-commerce and enterprise customers,” said Cameron Bready, CEO of Global Payments.
Not everyone is rooting for it. Stock in Global Payments fell nearly 10% after the news, while FIS saw a bump of 3.4%. Over the past year, Global stocks have slowed down the S&P 500 as FIS performance has slowed down.
Analysts say the move was slow. According to Reuters, Andrew Jeffrey of William Blair said:
This transaction also indicates a complete exit from FIS merchant services. Initially, in 2019, it purchased WorldPay for $43 billion, but last year it sold its control stake to GTCR due to a significantly lower valuation of $18.5 billion. Now it’s walking completely.
As part of the acquisition agreement, GTCR will receive global payments worth $97 per share, giving the merged company 15% of its shares, worth about $21 billion.
Global payments will fund the acquisition with Issuer Unit Sales, existing cash and revenue from new debt of $7.7 billion. Once confirmed, the total business is expected to generate $12.5 billion in adjusted net revenues and $6.5 billion in core revenues.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026 when regulatory approval is pending.
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