Global Payments' $22.7 billion Worldpay deal clears antitrust hurdle

• Key insight: Global Payments' $22.7 billion deal cleared the U.K.'s competition watchdog. 
• What's at stake: Global Payments faces stiff competition from Block, PayPal, Stripe and legacy bank technology and payment companies. 
• Forward look: Global Payments hopes to complete the deal by early 2026. 

Global Payments' quest to refocus its business more squarely on merchant services relies partly on M&A deals, and a green light from regulators concerned about the impact on competition.

The firm made some progress this week as U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority approved Global Payments $22.7 acquisition of Worldpay, a transaction Global Payments hopes to complete by early 2026.

U.S. regulators approved the proposed Global Payments/Worldpay deal in July, while the CMA launched a query in September. The U.K. regulator is still investigating an adjacent deal in which bank technology firm FIS will buy Worldpay's issuer business, TSYS, for $13.5 billion.

The two deals, if approved, will enable FIS to focus more on technology for card-issuing banks while Global Payments targets merchants. The Global Payments/Worldpay combination will have more than 6 million customers in more than 175 countries and process 94 billion transactions totaling $3.7 trillion yearly.

"While the Global Payments and Worldpay merger may create a payments giant in terms of volume, it also concentrates significant power in a sector already dominated by a few major players," Eric Cohen, CEO of Merchant Advocate, told American Banker. "For merchants, fewer choices often translate to higher costs and less flexibility."

FIS did not return a request for comment. In an email, a Global Payments spokesperson said "We are pleased that the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) in the U.K. has approved Global Payments' acquisition of Worldpay. This important milestone keeps us on track to close this transaction and the divestiture of our issuer solutions business in the first half of 2026, subject to the receipt of the remaining regulatory approvals."

Global Payments is planning to acquire Worldpay in part to offer Global Payments' retooled Genius point of sale system directly to Worldpay's merchants. Genius, a combination of more than a dozen existing and new payment systems, launched in May for restaurants, retailers in June and large enterprise clients in September, with further industries and international markets scheduled for coming months.

Global Payments CEO Cameron Bready has referred to Genius as a "milestone" in the company's journey to unify all of Global Payments' products into a cloud-hosted platform that merchants can regularly update as payments trends change.

Global Payments' strategy has won clients in sports, this week adding the New Jersey Devils and Philadelphia 76ers, expanding a roster that includes the Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons, Minnesota Twins and others. In other moves, Global Payments partnered with payment technology firm BVNK to support stablecoin payments. Global Payments competes with Fiserv and newer payment technology firms that focus on small businesses, including Stripe, Block and PayPal. 

Analysts have been critical of Global Payments' strategy in the past year, with JPMorgan in late 2024 saying the company's stock was in "no man's land." William Blair analysts in August said they were "encouraged that Global is moving forward with its software-integrated POS, but we believe innovations will prove too little, too late in an increasingly competitive market."

In a more recent research note ahead of Global Payments' next earnings call on Nov. 3, Jeffries said the continued Genius rollout, with upcoming international debuts in Canada, Mexico in the new term and Europe and Asia Pacific in 2026 provide "more upbeat on the potential to take share from [rival Fiserv's] Clover as a lower-cost alternative."