Global Payments Acquires Worldpay for $24.25 Billion: The Three-Way Deal That Reshaped Payments

Key facts

Enterprise value

Disclosed

$24.25bnFor 100% of Worldpay, including $1.55bn of anticipated tax assets

Net purchase price

Disclosed

$22.7bnHeadline value less the expected tax assets

Multiple

Disclosed

8.5×Adjusted EBITDA, on a net basis and including run-rate synergies

Sellers

Disclosed

GTCR 55% · FIS 45%GTCR has been majority owner since January 2024

Linked divestiture

Disclosed

$13.5bnIssuer Solutions sold to FIS. FIS is the payer on this leg

FIS stake credit

Disclosed

$6.6bnPre-tax value of FIS’s 45% Worldpay stake, netted against the $13.5bn

GTCR consideration

Disclosed

Cash + ~43m sharesAbout 15% of Global Payments after close

Completed

Disclosed

Jan 2026Both legs closed together after regulatory approvals

Disclosed

Stated by a party to the transaction

Reported

Press or data-provider figure, not company-confirmed

Calculated

Derived by Acquiry from disclosed or reported inputs

Illustrative

Hypothetical or reader-supplied input

Undisclosed

Not public and not estimated

On 17 April 2025, Global Payments announced (opens in a new tab) a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of Worldpay for an enterprise value of $24.25 billion. Worldpay had two owners: GTCR (opens in a new tab), the Chicago private equity firm, with 55%, and FIS (opens in a new tab), with the remaining 45%.

The same announcement set out a second transaction. Global Payments would sell its Issuer Solutions business, the card-issuer processing platform it gained through its 2019 merger with TSYS (opens in a new tab), to FIS for $13.5 billion. On this leg FIS is the buyer and Global Payments is the seller.

The two legs were linked. Rather than paying Global Payments $13.5 billion in cash and separately receiving cash for its Worldpay stake, FIS transferred its 45% stake, valued at $6.6 billion before tax, as part-payment for Issuer Solutions. GTCR was paid in cash plus about 43 million newly issued Global Payments shares, which left it holding roughly 15% of the enlarged company. The flow of funds is set out in full in the deal structure chapter.

Both legs completed in January 2026 (opens in a new tab) after antitrust clearances, including in the United States and the European Union. Global Payments emerged as a pure merchant business. FIS became a focused banking and capital markets technology company that now also owns one of the largest card-issuer processors. GTCR became one of Global Payments’ largest shareholders.

The deal makes sense only against Worldpay’s ownership history, one of the most eventful in payments. In January 2018 US processor Vantiv completed its takeover of UK-listed Worldpay plc and took the Worldpay name, creating a transatlantic merchant acquirer listed in New York and London.

In March 2019 FIS agreed to buy the combined Worldpay in a deal valued at about $43 billion including debt, then the largest fintech transaction on record. It closed that July. The thesis was that one company could sell core banking software to banks and payment acceptance to merchants, and cross-sell between the two.

The cross-sell never arrived at scale. In July 2023 FIS agreed to sell 55% of Worldpay to GTCR at an implied enterprise value of about $18.5 billion, keeping 45% and taking about $11.7 billion in pre-tax proceeds. The deal completed on 31 January 2024. Charles Drucker, who had led Vantiv and Worldpay as a public company, returned as chief executive.

Fifteen months later, GTCR and FIS agreed to sell the whole business to Global Payments. For Worldpay’s staff and customers, it was the third change of control since 2018, and the one we think has the strongest strategic fit.

Worldpay is a merchant acquirer (opens in a new tab). It lets businesses accept payments by authorising, processing and settling transactions between the merchant, the card networks such as Visa and Mastercard, and the banks that issue consumers’ cards. It earns a share of each transaction, net of interchange (opens in a new tab) and network fees.

• –Global reach. Worldpay processes in well over 100 countries and supports hundreds of payment methods, including local schemes such as iDEAL in the Netherlands and Boleto in Brazil. That makes it a natural single provider for multinational merchants.
• –E-commerce strength. It has long been one of the strongest acquirers for online merchants, with deep platform integrations and fraud tooling. That complements Global Payments’ historic strength at the physical point of sale.
• –Enterprise weighting. Its client base leans towards large enterprises and global brands. That brings stable volume, but also concentration: losing a handful of large accounts can matter.

Global Payments has described the combined business as processing roughly $3.7 trillion of payment volume a year for about 6 million merchant locations in more than 175 countries. On that measure it sits alongside Fiserv (opens in a new tab) and JPMorgan’s payments business among the largest merchant acquirers in the world.

The transaction is best read as two sales that share a settlement. In the first, Global Payments buys 100% of Worldpay. In the second, FIS buys Issuer Solutions from Global Payments. Because FIS is a seller in the first and a buyer in the second, the two were netted.

• –Acquirer. Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN).
• –Target. Worldpay, 100% of equity.
• –Seller 1: GTCR (55%). Cash plus about 43 million new Global Payments shares, or roughly 15% of the combined company.
• –Seller 2: FIS (45%). Stake valued at $6.6 billion pre-tax, credited against the Issuer Solutions price rather than paid in cash.
• –Linked divestiture. Issuer Solutions sold to FIS for $13.5 billion. FIS paid the balance after the stake credit, implying about $6.9 billion of net cash before adjustments.
• –Price. $24.25 billion enterprise value; $22.7 billion net of about $1.55 billion of expected tax assets; about 8.5× adjusted EBITDA on a net basis including synergies.
• –Financing. $7.7 billion of committed bridge financing for the cash parts of the deal and related refinancing.

In merchant acquiring, scale lowers unit costs, funds fraud and technology investment, and supports sharper pricing for large merchants. Before the deal Global Payments was a major acquirer but smaller than Fiserv, and it faced a fast-growing JPMorgan payments business that can bundle acquiring with banking relationships.

Worldpay addresses that in one step. It adds e-commerce depth to Global Payments’ strength at the physical checkout, and it adds international coverage for multinational merchants that want a single provider. Global Payments pointed to about $600 million of annual cost synergies and at least $200 million of revenue synergies, discussed in the synergies chapter.

Selling Issuer Solutions is the other half of the strategy. Card-issuer processing serves banks, not merchants. By exiting it, Global Payments simplified its story to investors and freed management to focus on one customer type.

FIS sells software and processing to banks: large institutions with long procurement cycles, heavy technical requirements and multi-year contracts. Worldpay sells payment acceptance to merchants, from small shops to global retailers, with faster sales cycles and a focus on price, uptime and coverage.

The 2019 thesis assumed banks would buy merchant acquiring from their technology vendor and merchants would buy banking tools from their acquirer. In practice neither group did so at meaningful scale. Integrating Worldpay’s many platforms, built through years of acquisitions and spread across numerous countries, also consumed management time and capital.

Global Payments put the multiple (opens in a new tab) at about 8.5 times Worldpay’s adjusted EBITDA (opens in a new tab), measured on the net purchase price of $22.7 billion and including expected synergies. The distinction matters: on the headline figure and before synergies, the multiple would be higher.

Against Worldpay’s own history, the price is a partial recovery. It is about 31% above the roughly $18.5 billion implied when GTCR bought control in 2023, and about 44% below the roughly $43 billion FIS agreed in 2019. Those are enterprise-value comparisons. They are not the same as any owner’s realised gain or loss, because debt, cash flows during ownership and taxes all differ.

What FIS actually realised

FIS’s Worldpay exit came in two pieces: about $11.7 billion of pre-tax proceeds for 55% in 2024, and a $6.6 billion pre-tax credit for 45% in 2026. Together that is about $18.3 billion before tax for the equity, against a 2019 purchase that included substantial assumed debt. A fair loss figure needs FIS’s full cost basis, the debt it assumed and repaid, and the cash Worldpay generated in between, and FIS has not published that calculation.

For GTCR, the 1.31× move in Worldpay’s enterprise value between its 2023 entry and the 2025 sale is a useful signal, but its equity return depends on the leverage it used and is not public. GTCR also kept exposure through its roughly 15% Global Payments stake.

Global Payments targeted about $600 million of annual run-rate cost synergies and at least $200 million of revenue synergies within roughly three years of completion. Cost synergies usually carry more credibility because they depend mostly on the acquirer’s own decisions.

• –Technology and infrastructure (Acquiry estimate: ~$200m). Consolidating duplicate processing platforms, data centres and technology contracts. High credibility, but slow and risky to execute in payments.
• –Corporate and G&A (Acquiry estimate: ~$150m). Removing duplicate corporate functions, standalone Worldpay costs and management layers. High credibility.
• –Procurement and vendors (Acquiry estimate: ~$100m). Combined purchasing power for technology, network services and third parties. High credibility.
• –Revenue synergies (target: at least $200m). Cross-selling the combined product set and extending Worldpay’s e-commerce and international reach to Global Payments’ merchants. Medium credibility, because customers decide.

The split of the $600 million cost target across categories is our estimate, not company guidance. Use the scenario explorer to see how different delivery rates change the run-rate total.

The deal closed with approvals in hand, so the open risks are about execution. Worldpay has been through near-continuous change since 2018, and every ownership move has tested staff retention and client relationships.

The most important line is integration. If it goes well, the other risks shrink: synergies fund debt reduction, and a stable platform keeps large merchants. If it stalls, the bear case comes into view.

Global Payments

Since January 2026 Global Payments has focused on integration and on delivering the synergy plan over about three years. With Issuer Solutions gone, its reporting and management attention centre on merchants. Reducing the debt taken on for the cash components is a stated priority.

FIS

FIS is now a banking and capital markets technology company that also owns Issuer Solutions, which processes card portfolios for banks and other card issuers. That fits its customer base far better than merchant acquiring did.

GTCR

GTCR exited control of Worldpay but kept exposure to its success through roughly 15% of Global Payments. Its ownership period, including Charles Drucker’s return as chief executive and a refocus on core merchant acquiring, helped make Worldpay a clean standalone asset for a strategic buyer.

1. 1.Strategic fit matters more than financial engineering. FIS and Worldpay struggled because they served different customers, not because the price was wrong. Buyers should test whether the businesses share customers, channels and capabilities before they model synergies.
2. 2.Scale alone is not a strategy. Size lowers costs but does not create coherence. The combined FIS–Worldpay group was large but unfocused.
3. 3.Private equity can reposition an asset. Under GTCR, Worldpay regained standalone focus and a clear story, which made it easier for a strategic buyer to act.
4. 4.Asset swaps can beat all-cash deals. Netting FIS’s stake against the Issuer Solutions price, and paying GTCR partly in stock, reduced the cash and debt the deal needed. See the flow of funds.
5. 5.Integration record belongs in diligence. Buyers should weigh their own integration record against the target’s complexity. Global Payments’ experience with TSYS is part of why the market gave it the benefit of the doubt.

Three cases frame the outcome. In the bull case, integration succeeds, synergies beat plan and scale wins share from Fiserv. In the base case, most cost synergies arrive, revenue synergies lag and the deal is sound but not transformative. In the bear case, key people leave, rivals target the largest accounts and debt limits investment.

The right deal for Global Payments. A cautionary tale for everyone else.

This combination makes strategic sense in a way the FIS one did not. Global Payments and Worldpay serve the same customers through the same channels and need the same capabilities. The structure gave every party what it needed rather than simply maximising cash.

The FIS story is the more instructive one. A $43 billion bet on diversification ended with the business sold in two pieces for a combined enterprise value far below the entry price. The exact loss is harder to pin down than headlines suggest, but the direction is not in doubt.

This analysis was compiled from primary disclosures first: Global Payments’ 17 April 2025 announcement and FIS’s January 2026 completion release. Earlier transaction values for Worldpay (FIS in 2019, GTCR in 2023) are labelled reported where we have not retrieved the original filing.

Every figure in this article carries a label. Disclosed means stated by Global Payments or FIS. Reported means attributed to secondary sources. Calculated means derived by Acquiry from disclosed or reported inputs, with the method shown. Illustrative means a reader-controlled or hypothetical input.

This is the second edition. The first edition misstated the direction of the Issuer Solutions payment, described GTCR’s consideration as all cash, and published FIS loss figures built on that error. Those have been corrected or withdrawn. The category split of the $600 million cost target is Acquiry’s estimate, not company guidance.

Research cutoff: 30 September 2026. All imagery in this report is original to Acquiry Deal Intelligence.

Independence. Acquiry was not engaged by any party. This is independent research from public sources and is not a solicitation, investment advice, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Acquiry holds no disclosed position in Global Payments Inc., Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., Worldpay or funds managed by GTCR.