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posted by martyb on Saturday July 08 2017, @03:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the trends-and-insights,-too dept.

In the world of financial technology, where startups are the focus of M&A chatter, a $10 billion combination of two back-office processors whose roots date to the 1970s might seem unusual.

But Vantiv Inc's (VNTV.N) plan to acquire Worldpay Group PLC (WPG.L) shows that the sheer size of some legacy players - and the inertia of their customers - makes them more interested in buying one another than newer rivals, bankers and analysts said. The two companies facilitate payments by linking stores to customers' bank and credit-card accounts.

"It's a pretty sticky product," said Thad Peterson, an analyst at Aite Group. "Once merchants find a processor that works for them, they are unlikely to change. Merchants aren't in the business of payments, they are in the business of selling stuff."

Vantiv started as a project inside of Cincinnati-based regional lender Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB.O) during the Nixon era. Worldpay, headquartered in London, was launched by a British lender in 1989 and absorbed into Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L).

Both companies were spun out of their banks after the financial crisis and thrived on their own continents. Now they are poised to become the singular middleman for more sales globally than any other wholly-owned merchant payments processor based on the $1.3 trillion worth of transactions they handled in 2016, according to data from The Nilson Report.

Source: Reuters


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 08 2017, @05:25PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 08 2017, @05:25PM (#536578)

    Yes, I think that's the general idea of golden shower economics.

    Since we've established that it's start-ups and bankers who are doing all the sexual harassment in tech, can we get these companies investigated? We need to empower their female employees to publicly accuse these companies in the media.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 08 2017, @05:58PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 08 2017, @05:58PM (#536591)

    No, we don't. We live in a society where we have laws and the accused have rights. They can already do that if they wish, it's just that they can be sued for libel or defamation of character as appropriate. Which is a good thing.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 08 2017, @06:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 08 2017, @06:40PM (#536601)

      The accused have no rights in the media.