---
title: "Global Payments → TSYS"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/global-payments-buy-tsys-2019"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2019"
author: "Ihor Vlasov"
reviewed: "2026-09-20"
---

# Global Payments → TSYS

The third of 2019's payments mega-mergers: a merchant acquirer combining with a card-issuer processor in an all-stock deal valued at $21.5bn, leaving Global Payments shareholders with 52% of the enlarged company.

The third of the 2019 payments mega-mergers, leaving Global Payments holders with 52% of the enlarged company.

- **Acquirer:** Global Payments (United States)
- **Target:** TSYS (United States)
- **Value:** $21.5B
- **Announced:** May 2019
- **Completed:** September 2019
- **Sector:** Payments
- **Deal type:** merger

## Why it mattered

Global Payments acquired for merchants; TSYS processed cards for the banks that issued them, and had bought its own merchant business, Heartland's rival Cayan and the Netspend prepaid platform. The deal joined the two halves of the card transaction in one company — the argument every 2019 combination made — and, unlike FIS and Fiserv, did so between two payments specialists rather than a bank-software vendor and an acquirer. It was struck as a merger of equals in structure, with Global Payments' Jeff Sloan as chief executive and TSYS's Troy Woods as chairman, and priced at a modest premium because both sets of shareholders were staying in.

The combined company became the largest pure-play in US payments and spent the following years buying and selling to prove the thesis: EVO Payments in 2023 to add merchants in Europe, then the 2025 exchange in which it bought Worldpay from GTCR and FIS and handed its issuer-processing business — the TSYS half of this deal — to FIS in part payment.

## What it left behind

The 2025 transaction is the verdict: six years after buying TSYS to combine issuing and acquiring, Global Payments gave the issuing business away to become a larger pure acquirer. The strategy of holding both sides of the transaction had no advantage the market would pay for, and the company that had run the experiment reversed it.

— Ihor Vlasov, M&A FinTech Expert. Last reviewed 2026-09-20. https://mahouse.world/authors/ihor-vlasov