In a major news story that’s shaking up the payments industry and impacting millions of businesses worldwide, Global Payments has announced an agreement to acquire Worldpay for a staggering $22.7 billion.
While the financial analysts and investors are all focused on the numbers, we’re more concerned about what this means for merchants relying on these providers for payment acceptance.
Rather than getting lost in the financial details, I’ll focus more on how this acquisition could affect your fees, service, and bottom line.
Key Highlights of the Deal
Let’s quickly cover the deal’s broad strokes so you understand what’s actually happening here.
- Global Payments is acquiring Worldpay from GTCR and FIS for $22.7 billion.
- Global Payments is simultaneously selling its issuer solutions business (which includes its TSYS issuing operations) to FIS for $13.5 billion.
- These two deals are cross-conditioned—meaning neither can close without the other.
- After the acquisition is complete, the new Global Payments will process approximately 94 billion transactions and $3.7 trillion in volume annually from 6 million merchants in 175 countries.
- Global Payments will become a pure merchant solutions business.
- The transaction is expected to close in the first half 2026, pending regulatory approvals.
This is one of the largest acquisitions in the payments space in the past few years. But neither of these companies are strangers to deals at this scale (just 6 years ago FIS acquired Worldpay for $43 billion, and Global acquired TSYS for $21 billion).
While Worldpay’s new valuation significantly decreased from its initial sale to FIS, this new acquisition actually represents an increase in Worldpay’s value from when FIS sold a majority stake to GTCR less than two years ago.
What This Means for Global Payments Merchants
If you’re currently using Global Payments or any of its subsidiaries for credit card processing, you may potentially have access to expanded e-commerce capabilities from Worldpay’s technology.
You could also unlock more payment types, more international payment options, and smoother integrations with software platforms via Worldpay’s Paytrix solution.
But based on our extensive experience auditing statements from Global Payments, we’ve seen a troubling pattern of rate increases and hidden fees over the years.
We’ve found them padding assessments in multiple instances. And just last month, we caught Global Payments ripping off businesses—charging an absurd 20% effective rate to one merchant and tripling another merchant’s rate from one month to the next.
Theoretically, this acquisition could put Global Payments in a position where they have a simpler business model and can be a bit more competitive on pricing. But I honestly would be shocked if that were the case.
Based on Global’s reputation and our experience, I think there’s a chance this type of aggressive pricing could spread to more accounts after the acquisition.
What This Means for Worldpay Merchants
If your business currently processes payments via Worldpay, you likely won’t see any immediate changes. The deal still hasn’t officially closed, and once it does, I’m not anticipating anything major happening overnight.
Unfortunately, there could be some potential long-term impacts to your business down the road.
As previously mentioned, we’ve caught Global Payments too many times over the years applying unethical billing tactics to businesses. Worldpay is also known for adding extra fees and unnecessary charges to accounts (which I’ve covered in my Worldpay review), but this isn’t nearly as bad as what Global Payments has been doing.
Worldpay merchants may eventually get lumped into Global’s frequent rate hikes and potentially experience the same aggressive pricing tactics that Global has been applying for years—padded assessments, hidden charges, extra fees, and basically just charging as much as they possibly can until you say something and push back.
Keep an eye out for any contract changes after your current term is up. There might be some growing pains in customer service down the line as well, as it’s unclear if and when you’ll be transitioned to Global for support or if Global will keep Worldpay as a separate entity. This is all speculation right now and it’s too soon to say exactly what will happen.
Either way, I encourage any merchant using Worldpay to read my Global Payments review. It will give you a better idea of things to expect and what your new statements might look like once Global officially takes over.
What Merchants Should Do Now to Prepare
Again, there’s no immediate action you need to take. But if you’re using either of these processors, there are a few things you should be doing in the short term to prepare for any changes.
- Audit your statements: Review your last few months of statements to establish a baseline of your current fees. We offer a free statement audit that can identify any hidden charges you might have missed.
- Understand your contract terms: Pull out your current agreement to identify your term length, renewal date, early termination fees, and other pertinent info that you can leverage and use to prepare for changes.
- Watch out for notices: Both companies will likely be notifying affected accounts with any changes to your agreement. Don’t ignore communications from Global Payments or Worldpay (sometimes they’ll be at the bottom of your monthly statement). Read them carefully to keep pace with what’s happening.
- Negotiate now: Rather than waiting for the deal to go through and playing defense, you might have more leverage now to negotiate a better rate before the acquisition is finalized.
We rarely recommend switching merchant service providers. Even though Worldpay isn’t great (and things might be worse with Global), it’s still probably cheaper in the long run to stay with them and just negotiate better terms. That said, you can still explore alternatives so you know what options are out. You can even use another quote as leverage while you’re negotiating your rate.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot to unpack here. It’s a massive deal with significant implications in the payments space—ultimately creating one of the world’s largest merchant services providers.
While the companies promise enhanced capabilities and technology investments, we’re a bit skeptical and think that this could ultimately lead to fee increases over time.
As experts in the payments industry who advocate for merchants, we’ve seen firsthand how Global Payments attempts to overcharge merchants and we’re concerned that these practices may affect even more companies down the road—particularly Worldpay customers.
That said, there’s not an immediate need to panic. A lot can happen, and there’s a chance the deal doesn’t even go through.
If you have any questions or concerns, reach out to our team here at Merchant Cost Consulting for assistance. We can audit your statements now and negotiate directly with your current provider (whether that’s Global or Worldpay).
In addition to these initial savings, we’ll continue to audit your statements every month as part of our service. So if Global tries to sneak in any rate increases or hidden fees after the acquisition, we’ll catch it and try to stop it.