Having divested its card-issuing unit and acquired the massive Worldpay processing platform, Global Payments’ top executives early Wednesday said the company is ready to build its already sizable business with a new “pure-play focus” in the highly competitive acquiring sector, as chief executive Cameron Bready put it.
The two big transactions, both of which closed Jan. 12, saw Global Payments pay FIS Inc. $24.25 billion for Worldpay while selling the issuing unit to the same company for $12 billion.
Also in the early stages is agentic commerce, where Bready noted Global is “expanding investment.” The company is “already seeing results,” he said, in “helping merchants capture more revenue with less friction.” Here, the Worldpay acquisition will help out, as the company last year issued an open-source standard for developers working on AI-based commerce agents.
The Genius launch, which began in the hotly competitive restaurant market and in June expanded to “Genius for Retail,” has since added a drive-through component as well as a version for service businesses. Meanwhile, Global launched an advertising campaign “to put Genius in front of more prospects,” said Bready. Helping in that regard, he noted, is that Global is making Genius available through Worldpay, with a move to offer the platform in the United Kingdom, one of Worldpay’s strongest markets.