The story
Global Payments was founded in 1996 and spun off from National Data Corporation, its former parent company, in 2001. Global Payments has been an independent, publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange having the ticker symbol “GPN” since its spin off.
In 2009, it paid $75 million for United Card Service, Russia's leading credit card processing company. In 2011, Global Payments's United Card Service bought Alfa-Bank's credit card processing unit. In October 2012, it acquired the smaller Accelerated Payment Technologies for $413 million. In October 2014, it purchased Australian payment processing company Ezidebit for $305 million. In January 2015, it bought Payment Processing (also known as PayPros), a California company, for $420 million.
In March 2015, Global Payments bought Realex Payments, an Irish-based payments gateway services company, for €115 million. On April 25, 2016, Global Payments completed the acquisition of Heartland Payment Systems for $4.3 billion. Both Global Payments and its subsidiary Heartland Payment Systems were among the leading credit card processing companies in 2016, according to Business Insider. Its headquarters moved from Sandy Springs, Georgia to Atlanta, Georgia in 2016.
In 2017, Global Payments initiated acquiring divisions of Active Networks. In 2018, Global Payments completed the acquisition of AdvancedMD. Also in 2018, Global Payments completed the acquisition of Sentral Education.
On May 28, 2019, Global Payments announced a $21.5 billion merger with TSYS. The merger was expected to trigger a Federal Trade Commission investigation. However, no such investigation occurred.
In August 2022, Global Payments entered a definitive agreement to acquire EVO Payments Inc. for nearly $4 billion.
On May 1, 2023, the company announced that CEO Jeffrey M. Sloan would resign, effective June 1, 2023. COO Cameron M. Bready succeeded him as CEO and president. As of July 2023, no single COO of the company had been named. Instead, two individuals were appointed to oversee domestic and international operations as Senior Executive Vice Presidents: Vince Lombardo and Bob Cortopassi, respectively.
Starting in early 2024 and continuing into September, Global Payments began laying off staff. These layoffs took place in the US, Canada, UK and India, as well as other smaller regional markets. Approximately 5400 employees were laid off during this time. Just weeks before the September lay offs were announced, Global Payments reported its second quarter results. Global Payments reported a net income of $296.4 million, a significant increase of $46.6 million compared to $249.7 million in the same quarter of 2023.
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In April 2025, Global Payments agreed to acquire Worldpay, a payments technology provider, for $22 billion from GTCR and FIS. As part of this deal, it also agreed to sell its Issuer Solutions business, TSYS, to FIS for $13.5 billion. In January 2026, following regulatory approvals in multiple jurisdictions, it was announced the acquisition had been completed with a final transaction valued at $24.25 billion.
From Wikipedia’s article on Global Payments, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7