Following the recent announcement that Worldline will acquire Ingenico in a cash and share deal for €7.8bn;

Vlad Totia, Payments Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“Worldline’s acquisition of Ingenico creates a payment processor powerhouse in Europe, as it marks the biggest global deal of the year so far.

“With the democratization of payment methods, merchants are put in a delicate situation where they have to adapt very fast to accepting an increasing number of payment methods. This trend has not gone unnoticed by the market as the last two years have been marked by significant merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in the payments processor space.

“Most notably would be Global Payments’ merger with TSYS, Fidelity National’s acquisition of Worldpay and Fiserv buying First Data. As payment methods become more diverse, merchant acquirers need global reach, local expertise and economies of scale in order to stay ahead of customer’s purchase demands.

“By combining the two companies, Worldline is heavily consolidating its European presence by accessing Ingenico’s roughly 550,000 merchants. One of the more impressive feats of this acquisition however, is Worldline now tapping into the Chinese market where Ingenico has quite a foothold. In 2018 Ingenico partnered with WeChat Pay, AliPay and China UnionPay, becoming one of the first global payment service providers (PSP) to fully integrate with Tencent’s payment ecosystem and over 1.1 billion users.

“As people get more comfortable with fintech innovations and having different payment methods, more similar M&A deals are poised to happen in the near future.”