Travel Payments Sees $10.4 Billion Merger That Makes Worldpay a Stronger Competitor

Earlier this month, Worldpay, a UK-based payments processing company, was taken over by Vantiv, a U.S. counterpart, in a $10.4 billion deal. The combined company will be called Worldpay. For the travel industry, in particular, Worldpay claims to be a market leader among payment providers. For example, its back-end technology has helped British Airways to ensure more customers complete the online payment process and to handle more efficiently payments across an array of currencies than the carrier's previous solution did. Worldpay works with more than 80 airlines worldwide — including British Airways, Emirates, HK Express, Holiday Extras, Caribbean Airlines, Beijing Capital Airlines, Vanilla Air, and BMI Regional. It also has relationships with some online travel agents, such as Fareportal (owner of CheapOair) and other travel service providers. Worldpay did not have much customer overlap with Vantiv, and claimed to be to be the largest acquirer of card transactions generated at merchants outside of the U.S., but it only had 15 percent of its overall revenue coming from within the U.S. Vantiv, meanwhile, claims to be the largest acquirer of merchants’ card transactions in the U.S. The combined operation could be competitive across verticals in sectors such as retail with global banks like JPMorgan Chas