Global Payments completed its acquisition of Worldpay from GTCR in January 2026, creating the world's largest pure-play merchant acquiring company. The combined entity serves over 6 million merchant customers across 175+ countries, processing approximately $3.7 trillion in annual payment volume and 94 billion transactions.
Dual Restructuring
The transaction involved two simultaneous deals: Global Payments acquired Worldpay for $24.25 billion (cash and shares), while divesting its Issuer Solutions business (the former TSYS card processing unit) to FIS for $13.5 billion. The result effectively undoes the 2019 TSYS-Global Payments merger, creating two focused companies: Global Payments for merchant acquiring, FIS for issuer processing.
Market Structure Impact
The combined Global Payments-Worldpay entity creates a merchant acquirer with unmatched geographic reach and transaction scale. Competitors including Adyen, Stripe, and the combined Fiserv must now compete against a processor with both enterprise scale (Worldpay's large merchant portfolio) and SMB depth (Global Payments' integrated commerce solutions). The UK CMA cleared the deal without conditions.
What This Means
This is the largest payments industry restructuring since the 2019 mega-merger wave. It establishes clear market segmentation: Global Payments dominates merchant acquiring, FIS reclaims issuer processing scale, and Fiserv spans both. For merchants, the consolidation could mean fewer competitors and less pricing leverage, though the combined entity's scale should enable continued technology investment.