Wirecard, Ingenico Buoyed By Worldpay Acquisition

Shares in Euro payments tech companies rose on Monday (March 18) after news of the Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) takeover of Worldpay, a London-based payment processing company, according to a report by Reuters.

FIS paid $35 billion for Worldpay and other companies’ shares floated up on the news. FinTech company Worldline was up 3.1 percent, and software company Atos, which owns about a 50 percent stake in Worldline, was up 1.2 percent.

Worldpay shares popped almost 10 percent in Monday afternoon trading.

Ingenico, a French-based payments company, saw its shares rise 1.1 percent, and Wirecard AG’s shares also saw a rise in Germany.

Transactions have grown in complexity and moved online, and the payment service industry increasingly has to deal with more complicated issues, like foreign currencies and different types of payments, all while moving at extremely fast speeds, according to a report from the Boston Herald.

Worldpay is said to handle upwards of 40 billion transactions a year, and it supports 300 payment types through 120 currencies. Combined, the two companies would have a revenue of $12.3 billion as of 2018. FIS previously bought SunGard in 2015 for $5 billion.

“Scale matters in our rapidly changing industry,” said Gary Norcross, chairman and CEO at FIS. “Upon closing later this year, our two powerhouse organizations will combine forces to offer a customer-driven combination of scale, global presence and the industry’s broadest range of global financial solutions.”

The combined companies will be located in FIS’ headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida. Norcross will be the CEO and Worldpay CEO Charles Drucker will serve as executive vice chairman.

The deal’s value is $43 billion, including Worldpay’s debt. The expected range of revenue growth is between 6 and 9 percent through the year 2021. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year.

Worldpay is a British company that was acquired less than two years ago by a Cincinnati-based company called Vantiv. Vantiv later changed its name to Worldpay.