Global Payments provides payment processing services to merchants, allowing them to accept credit and debit cards, along with other payment types. In return, they receive a percentage of the transaction value. They provide these services both directly to merchants, and indirectly through other financial organizations. Global Payments also provides other supporting services and analytics to customers of its main payment processing services. As of 2017, 40% of revenue was derived from vertical and omnichannel services. As of 2016, 75% of Global Payments revenue was from North America, 18% was from Europe, and 7% was from Asia-Pacific. Global Payments processes approximately 6 billion transactions per year for 1 million merchant locations. Global Payments has 8500 employees. It is a Fortune 1000 company.
History
Global Payments was founded in 2000 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, a California company, for $420 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 acquisition of AdvancedMD. In 2018, Global Payments completed acquisition of Sentral Education. On May 28, 2019, Global Payments announced a $21.5 billion merger with TSYS. The merger is expected to trigger a Federal Trade Commission investigation.
Controversy
In 2012, a data breach at Global Payments affected 1.5 million credit and debit card numbers. This breach eventually cost the company around $100 million. In 2015, a technical fault with Global Payments's systems led to thousands of British businesses being unable to accept credit card payments on Valentine's Day weekend.
