MW Global Payments and FIS just struck a complex megadeal. Who's the big winner?

By Emily Bary

The stock moves suggest FIS came out on top in the recently announced transaction. But some analysts see logic in Global Payments' latest move.

The payment-technology world is getting a shakeup thanks to a newly announced deal between Fidelity National Information Services Inc. and Global Payments Inc. that will give both businesses more focus.

Through the transaction, FIS $(FIS)$ will purchase Global Payments' $(GPN)$ issuer-solutions business for a net purchase price of $12 billion, while Global Payments intends to buy Worldpay, which is 45% owned by FIS and 55% owned by private-equity firm GTCR, for a net purchase price of $22.7 billion.

The deal announcement is the latest twist in a yearslong mergers-and-acquisitions saga that has seen FIS, Global Payments and Fiserv Inc. $(FI)$ scoop up some businesses - and rid themselves of others - as they navigate the changing financial-technology landscape.

Years back, the companies seemed to want meaningful footprints in both issuer processing and merchant acquiring. Now FIS and Global Payments want to take more focused approaches.

Based on the respective stock moves, the market has decided that FIS is the winner of this pending deal. Its stock is up more than 6%, while Global Payments' stock is down 18% and heading for its worst day in about five years.

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FIS "is clearly winning the trade in our view," Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev said, as the issuer business it is buying is "a stable grower that's complementary to its business." FIS had already been backing away from exposure to merchant acquiring.

For Global Payments, Dolev is more perplexed about the deal's rationale. "The reason [Worldpay] was taken private to begin with was because it had share loss issues. Can [Global Payments] fix them while it is struggling to keep its own business intact?" he asked.

While Worldpay's business appears to have improved in its two years under private-equity stewardship, the unit "has been tossed around" as it dealt with growth issues.

Other analysts were more upbeat that Global Payments could make something out of the new arrangement.

Baird's David Koning saw the deal in a positive light, as it could help Global Payments gain ground with larger merchants and those in the e-commerce arena.

And William Blair's Andrew Jeffrey called the transaction a "watershed" moment for the company.

"After several years of uninspiring merchant organic revenue growth and what we consider a lack of strategic cohesiveness, this transaction is a bold step for Global management - and long overdue," Jeffrey wrote. "Although we believe Worldpay has been posting no-better-than-industry low- to mid-single-digit organic revenue growth, combining with Global bolsters its geographic reach and distribution heft, in our opinion."

At the same time, he kept a market-perform view of Global Payments' stock, writing that he preferred Fiserv's. "We do not consider a combined Global/Worldpay significant incremental competition, given the lack of a software-integrated [point of sale] to compete with Clover," Jeffrey wrote. The Clover business is essentially Fiserv's equivalent to Square.

-Emily Bary

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April 17, 2025 11:35 ET (15:35 GMT)

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