Global Payments bets on scale as FIS doubles down on Issuing

Global Payments has completed a long-anticipated strategic reset, finalising the acquisition of Worldpay while divesting its Issuer Solutions business to FIS.

Global Payments bets on scale

Together, the transactions reshape the competitive landscape of global payments infrastructure, creating two more sharply focused — and arguably more formidable — industry players.

For Global Payments, the deal marks a decisive pivot away from issuing into pure-play commerce enablement.

The combined group now serves more than six million merchant locations, processes $3.7tn in annual payment volume and handles approximately 94bn transactions across 175 countries.

Scale, in payments, remains strategy — and Global Payments has doubled down.

From Diversified Processor to Commerce Specialist

The strategic logic is clear. By integrating Worldpay’s enterprise and e-commerce capabilities with its own SMB and point-of-sale strengths, Global Payments is positioning itself as a horizontal commerce platform spanning every merchant segment.

The company will operate through three distinct go-to-market channels — Enterprise, SMB, and Integrated & Platforms — each with dedicated product roadmaps and sales strategies.

Crucially, management has committed to investing more than $1bn annually in innovation, signalling that this is not merely a consolidation play but a bid to compete on technology depth as well as distribution.

Cross-selling opportunities — from deploying Global Payments’ Genius POS into Worldpay’s merchant base to offering Worldpay’s e-commerce stack to existing clients — are expected to drive near-term revenue synergies.

Balance Sheet Discipline Meets Scale Economics

Despite the size of the transaction, Global Payments insists financial discipline remains intact.

The group expects to maintain its investment-grade credit rating and reduce adjusted net leverage to 3.0x within 18 to 24 months.

With higher free cash flow generation, management is positioning the company to fund both organic innovation and shareholder returns.

This matters in a market where merchant acquirers are under sustained pricing pressure and must increasingly differentiate through software, data and embedded services rather than payments alone.

FIS Re-anchors Around Issuing and Data

For FIS, the reacquisition of Issuer Solutions — formerly TSYS — is equally strategic.

Rebranded as FIS Total Issuing Solutions, the business processes more than 40bn transactions annually across over 75 countries, cementing FIS as the world’s largest issuer processor.

More importantly, the scale of card and account-level data creates a foundation for advanced analytics and AI-driven services across fraud, credit decisioning and loyalty.

FIS expects the acquisition to generate an additional $500m in adjusted free cash flow in 2026, rising to $700m by 2028, while expanding its addressable issuer market to an estimated $28bn.

A Cleaner Industry Architecture

Taken together, the transactions simplify the payments industry’s structure. Global Payments emerges as a global commerce specialist; FIS as a data-rich issuing and banking technology powerhouse.

In a sector increasingly defined by focus, scale and platform depth, both companies are betting that clarity of purpose is the strongest competitive advantage of all.