(Reuters) -Fintech company Global Payments has agreed to buy rival Worldpay from FIS and private equity firm GTCR for $22.7 billion, doubling down on merchant services to better compete for big-business clients in the crowded payments market.
Under the deal announced on Thursday, Global Payments will sell its slower-growing issuer solutions unit, which offers card processing and account services, to FIS for $13.5 billion.
The deal will allow Global Payments to combine Worldpay’s strength in online and enterprise transactions with its own expertise in serving small and mid-sized companies.
It will create a payments giant that will serve more than six million customers and process about 94 billion transactions and $3.7 trillion in volume across more than 175 countries.
“This transaction provides us with one of the world’s most feature rich platforms to support ecommerce and enterprise customers,” Global Payments CEO Cameron Bready said.
Shares of Global Payments, which has a market value of more than $20 billion, fell 1.9% in premarket trading. FIS, also known as Fidelity National Information Services, slid 0.8%.
The deal marks FIS’ exit from the merchant services.
FIS had in 2023 sold a 55% stake in Worldpay to GTCR in a deal that then valued the unit at $18.5 billion, reversing its $43 billion buyout of Worldpay in 2019 after the unit lost ground to both traditional players and fintech startups.
As part of Thursday’s deal, GTCR, for its stake in Worldpay, will get shares of Global Payments valued at $97 each, giving it a nearly 15% ownership interest in the combined company, valued at about $21 billion.
The deals are expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
Global Payments will fund the acquisition using proceeds from the Issuer Solutions sale, existing cash and new debt.
It expects the deal to increase profits in the first year after it closes, helped by $600 million in annual cost savings and at least $200 million in added revenue over three years.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Arun Koyyur)
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