Vantiv is expanding its role in international payments, with its latest move gaining it a firm foothold in the United Kingdom.
The American payment processor, headquartered in Ohio, has just closed a deal with London-based payment processor WorldPay. Vantiv’s former British competitor has agreed — in principle — to be acquired by the company for nearly £7.7 billion (about $10 billion), the companies announced today.
The U.K. payments processor, which is a rival of payments processors such as Verifone and Stripe within the United Kingdom, was also fielding offers from JPMorgan Chase at the time of the agreement. The bank does not intend to pursue a counter-offer at this time.
WorldPay declined to comment on the acquisition at press time. However, the company noted in a statement that the acquisition presented “compelling strategic and financial rationale.” From the statement:
[The Combined Group] will serve a wide range of customers, with a strong position in the four core regions of the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America, including many of the world’s largest ecommerce merchants, and a substantial base of merchants of all sizes in Europe and the US.
The Combined Group will benefit from cutting-edge innovation, and substantial engineering capability and talent, with hubs in the UK, Europe and US.
Vantiv’s acquisition of WorldPay, which processes just over 40% of retail transactions within Britain, firmly places the company as an international player in payments. Currently, WorldPay processes about 36 million transactions per day (Vantiv processed 25 billion transactions in 2016, according to company statements).
The WorldPay agreement follows other acquisitions by Vantiv over the course of the last two years, including digital payment technology provider Paymetric announced in April 2017.
The “due diligence” process for the deal will be completed by the start of August 2017, according to the statement.
Bank Innovation has reached out to Vantiv for comment.