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Global Payments Inc. agreed early Thursday to purchase the big processor Worldpay LLC for $22.7 billion. GTCR, a Chicago-based private-equity firm acquired a 55% stake in Worldpay in July 2023 from FIS Inc., while parent FIS retained ownership of the remaining share.
Concurrent with the announcement of the Worldpay deal, Global Payments announced it is selling its issuer solutions unit to FIS for $13.5 billion. Formerly known as TSYS, the unit provides payment processing and technology solutions for credit and debit card issuers.
Both deals are expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval.
Global Payments will finance the acquisition through proceeds from the sale of its issuer solutions unit and from cash on hand and $7.7 billion in new debt issuance. The combined company is projected to generate about $12.5 billion in adjusted net revenue and $6.5 billion in adjusted core earnings.
The two deals position Global Payments to become a “leading pure play commerce solutions provider for merchants of all sizes,” Cameron Bready, Global Payments chief executive officer told analysts Thursday morning during a conference call held to announce the deals.
In addition, the acquisition of Worldpay “significantly increases” Global Payments’ exposure to the “fastest growing digital trends, geographies, and vertical markets in payments, while the divestiture of the issuer solutions unit allows Global Payment to “sharpen its focus,” Bready said.
With the addition of Worldpay, Global Payments will service more than 6 million merchants and process 94 billion transactions totaling $3.7 trillion in volume across more than 175 countries, giving the company “impressive global reach” Bready said.
In addition to being a leading acquirer, Worldpay also has payfac capabilities, Bready noted. A payfac, short for payment facilitator, allows customers to accept electronic payments using the payfac’s platform through a master merchant account. Examples of payfacs include Block Inc.’s Square merchant processing unit and Stripe Inc.
What made Worldpay an attractive acquisition target is that the acquirer is a “world-class leader” in servicing e-commerce and enterprise merchants, and allows Global Payments to “diversify away” from strictly servicing small and medium businesses, Bready told analysts.
The acquisition also allows Global Payments to have a differentiated offering for software platform partners globally. “We can serve any software platform partner across any operating model,” Bready said. “This [acquisition] significantly expands our integrated and embedded offerings.”
Bready added that the scale of the combined company is “truly impressive” from an economic standpoint. He added that, with the deal, Global Payments’ processing capabilities will be “unmatched.”
