Last week, Fidelity National Services (FIS) agreed to sell a majority stake in its Worldpay business to private equity funds managed by GTCR in a deal that values the merchant payments at $18.5 billion. However, just 4 years ago, FIS acquired Worldpay for more than $30 billion with the intention to revolutionize the industry, but […]
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Visa lags behind its main rivals in the European market for direct payments, with open-banking platform Tink potentially unlocking access to a significant market opportunity. However, the deal will undergo significant antitrust scrutiny in the EU and the U.K.
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Nexi, Worldline and other European PayTech companies may be in a better position than Visa, Mastercard and Paypal to reap the benefits of the $139 trillion market for account-to-account (A2A) payments that run outside the card networks.
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Three companies are competing to lead the EU PayTech sector, Adyen, Worldline and Nexi. While the former will likely rely on organic growth, the latter still seek more M&A opportunities. In this article, we tell you how these different strategies may play out.
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The failed attempt by Visa to buy Plaid may indicate a bigger problem for card networks and a few fintech companies, they are growing too large to be ignored by regulators and areas such account-to-account payments and merchant acquiring servicies may enter in antitrust scrutiny territory. In this article we tell you which PayTech companies may be in a better position to continue growing through M&A.
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Worldline nears closing a deal to acquire rival Ingenico as the remedies submitted during a phase I merger investigation are likely to be accepted by EU regulators. Yet, this deal, together with the recent Mastercard-Nets, suggest that the days when a FinTech deal was barely scrutinized by regulators and quickly approved may be gone. More consolidation in the market is expected as companies seek to offer omnichannel payment solutions but from now on, antitrust approvals may cost dearly.
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The new white paper published by the Libra Association on April 2020 improved the association’s governance rules, mitigating some antitrust risks. Yet, the conversion to a permissioned blockchain from a permissioneless one may still render too much control over the system to the founding members of the Libra Association.
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Visa’s $5 billion acquisition of Plaid was unconditionally cleared by the U.K.’s CMA on August 24. It contrasts with the EU conditional approval obtained by Mastercard in its acquisition of Nets on August 17. The analysis conducted by the U.K. regulator left a door wide open for companies like American Express, PayPal and TrueLayer to continue the consolidation in the customer-to-business (C2B) payment sector.
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(Premium) – Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) and Worldpay are closer to get all the necesary approvals for their $34 billion deal after the FTC cleared the operation in April 26. This mega merger isn’t likely to raise antitrust concerns and it may trigger more FinTech/payment M&A in 2019.
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Payments are probably the first market where start-ups successfully challenged traditional banks. Companies such as Monzo, Revolut, TransferWise, Stripe or HiFx quickly gained market share for local and international payments offering low or no transaction fees. These new services obliged banks to adopt new digital strategies to remain competitive. Now, lending and wealth management are the next sectors where startups and digital platforms are quickly stepping up.
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