Worldpay shares have jumped significantly after the payments processing firm announced a potential takeover bid. Shares in Worldpay increased almost 28% after the company stated that preliminary approaches had been made from Vantiv and JPMorgan, two major players in the US payment systems industry. Worldpay processes millions of payments daily, in-store, online and through mobile devices such as smartphones.
Worldpay tempered the talk by announcing that, although it had received preliminary approaches from both companies, there could be no certainty that an offer would, in fact, take place. It also stated that the terms of the offer, if there had been an offer, were also uncertain. This likely confirms that an offer has, in fact, been made but that none of firms involved is saying anything.
The use of contactless and online payments is increasing rapidly, particularly with the rapidly increasing use of smartphones to access the internet. The company regards itself as being one of the pioneers of this type of payment, including multi-currency payments. It is the market leader in the UK. Worldpay carries out over 40% of all such transactions, and its London headquarters employs around 5,000 staff.
Many small to medium size businesses use Worldpay. Among these are pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and retailers. Worldpay is one of the FTSE 100 Index of the largest listed companies in the UK. It became a member of the London Stock Exchange in 2015.
Worldpay shares were standing 408 GBX at 1639 (GMT+1) today – 4th July after hitting a 422 high. Last closing price then was 319.5. The company finished the day with a market value of £8.16 billion.
This is not the first time this week that a payment processor has been subject to a takeover bid. Net A/S, the Danish card payment services firm admitted that it had received attention from potential bidders at the weekend. Those in the know reckon that this could have involved one of the top payment services: Visa or Mastercard.
It could be that the giants want to make sure that they run the online, mobile and at-till payments services, and will buy out the competition if that is what they must do to achieve that. They have not stated this intention, but it is likely that they want to buy up regional services and consolidate them into one large global payment service. Time will tell.
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