On July 4, Worldpay Group PLC announced via the London Stock Exchange that it had been approached by Vantiv Inc. and JPMorgan Chase Bank about a possible acquisition. The companies were given until August 1 to make a firm offer or to withdraw themselves from consideration. News of a potential sale drove up stock prices by about 23 percent, reports The New York Times, bringing the company’s value to about $10.5 billion or 8 billion pounds.

On July 5, Worldpay announced that it had reached an agreement with Vantiv to be acquired. According to a statement, Worldpay says the two companies “see compelling strategic, commercial and financial rationale” for combining the businesses. The acquisition will help Vantiv expand its global footprint, solidifying its dominance in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America.

“The potential merger creates a scale world class payments group in a dynamic market, with deep payments capabilities, product and vertical expertise and strong distribution channels to serve merchants around the world in the global ecommerce market, and in-store and online in the U.K. and U.S. markets,” says Worldpay in a statement. “The Combined Group is expected to benefit from its strong presence and substantial opportunities in integrated payments and global ecommercie.

The successful completion of the merger is subject to approval by shareholders as well as regulatory approvals. Once the merger is complete, Worldpay will be delisted from the London Stock Exchange, and the combined company will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

The combined group will be led by Charles Drucker as executive chairman and Co-CEO (Vantiv president and CEO), Philip Jansen as Co-CEO (Worldpay CEO) and Stephanie Ferris as CFO (Vantiv CFO). The new board will include four Worldpay directors and seven Vantiv directors along with Sir Michael Rake (Worldpay chairman of the board) and Jeffrey Stiefler (Vantiv chairman of the board) serving the board in non-executive positions.

Based in London, Worldpay has about 4,500 employees with 25 offices in 11 countries. It has 30 years of experience with payments. In 2015, Worldpay processed 13.1 billion transactions, with approximately 35.8 million average daily transactions. With 400,000 customers worldwide, the company operates in 146 countries and in 126 currencies and it accepts 326 different alternative payment methods.

Previously known as Fifth Third Processing Solutions, Vantiv is rebranded in June 2011. It became a publicly traded company as VNTV on the New York Stock Exchange on March 22, 2012. Since then, the company has grown through a series of acquisitions. In 2016, Vantiv acquired Moneris USA and was named 2016 Best Channel Vendor by Business Solutions Magazine for the eighth year in a row. In 2017, Vantiv acquired Paymetric, Inc. and it was ranked as the top U.S. merchant acquirer for processing the most transactions by The Nilson Report. The company’s acquisition of Moneris moved Vantiv to the top spot.

Insider Take:

Technology advancements have created new opportunities for global payment processing, and the competition is heating up with companies like Stripe, Venmo and Square jockeying for position. Vantiv and JPMorgan are gaining a competitive advantage by acquiring smaller companies to expand into new markets and acquire blocks of established customers. In this case, Vantiv is growing its customer base by 400,000, assuming this acquisition survives all of the necessary shareholder and regulatory hurdles. Who will be next?