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The closure of a $43 billion deal between FIS and Worldpay last week – the biggest deal in the payments M&A space to date – is a sign that consolidation pressure is building in the space.
“With the introduction of instant payments, electronic payments have exploded,” says Jerry Norton, vice-president, financial services, at IT and business process services company CGI.
Jerry Norton, |
“But to gain market share, payment providers require scale. One of the quickest and cheapest ways of doing this is to acquire or merge with a company as opposed to developing new and expensive technology themselves.”
Just two days before the FIS-Worldpay merger was finalized on July 31, payments and technology company Fiserv and US financial services company First Data finalized their merger for $22 billion.
And in June, online payments giant PayPal acquired iZettle for $2.2 billion after the deal was cleared by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.
In August, Mastercard announced the $3.2 billion purchase of the real-time payments unit from Nets Group – the biggest acquisition for the company to date.