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Fidelity Information Services buys WorldPay
WorldPay Inc has been acquired by Fidelity
Information Services Inc for the sum of 34 billion USD. While impressive in itself,
the buyout comes not long after the recent Fiserv Inc's acquisition of First
Data Corp, with Fiserv paying 22 billion USD for FDC assets. These two business
deals are set to place both companies as top competitors, allowing them to
tackle such payments giants as PayPal and Square. And said companies themselves
have also been making significant acquisitions recently: PayPal bough iZettle
for 2.2 billion USD, while Square paid 365 million USD for Weebly in 2018.
Cross-border Payments in the Eurozone
With a vote of 532 in favour, the EU
Parliament has voted to end discrimination against payment service users in the
EU outside the Eurozone. The new rules state that cross-border payments in euro
and domestic payments should be charged the same, and banks are also expected
to make currency conversion costs transparent and visible to customers at POS
or ATM. This is excellent news for over
150 million EU citizens and 6 million businesses living and operating outside the
Eurozone and constitutes a significant step towards the Single market.
UnionPay come to UK
On March 5th,
Barclaycard announced a new partnership deal with China's UnionPay
International. The UK payment company has, via this deal, allowed over a 100,000 UK merchants to accept
UnionPay, starting this summer.
This deal brings together the processor of almost half the
UK's credit and debit cards and a favorite payment service provider for Chinese
tourists in the UK. Barclaycard is expected to benefit from the deal due to a
projected increase in the number of Chinese visitors, whereas UnionPay has made
a big step in its international expansion efforts. This, however, is not the
Chinese PSP's only foray into UK markets. It has also launched its UPI Developer platform for cross-border
payments as well as its first prepaid card for UK corporates and consumers
in January: the UPayCard.
Where is the Next Mega-merge Happening?
Analysts expect more fintech mergers in the very near future, with mega-deals becoming more frequent as financial and card processors increasingly desire to provide their customers with merchant processing capabilities.
Merchant processors are also expected to aim for payments
integration or expansion into SMB and it is becoming increasingly probable that
giants such as Amazon or JP Morgan
could make overtures towards PayPal and
Square.