2019: The year of consolidation continues

We’re more than halfway through the year, and we believe it’s fair to state 2019 will be known as the year of consolidation in the payments industry.

Just take a look at what has already transpired. In March, Fidelity National Information Services agreed to buy Worldpay, months after Fiserv announced takeover of First Data. Shortly before the Independence Day weekend in the U.S., Visa signed a definitive agreement to acquire Verifi—announcing that it was trying to augment the company’s fraud identification and prevention capabilities for e-commerce. A few weeks later, Visa made another acquisition announcement – it purchased Payworks GmbH, a Munich-based developer of cloud-based point-of-sale payment-gateway software, which will help Visa support in-store, online, and in-app transactions.

This is all on the heels of last spring’s, news that payment technology company Global Payments would buy peer Total System Services—the company’s second-biggest acquisition in three years. (It bought Heartland Payment Systems in 2016).

Why is this happening now?

Payment technology companies are fast consolidating to battle increased competition from banks making inroads into digital payments and fintech start-ups are chipping away at the bigger guys.

Consider also that the global payment market is set to reach $3 trillion a year in revenue by 2023 as customers opt for digital payments instead of cash, according to consulting firm McKinsey.

As the way people pay and get paid continues to evolve so should the industry and the way buyers and sellers communicate. When you consider it from that perspective, it’s no surprise this industry is evolving so quickly.

Payway has been in this industry for a long time — since 1984 to be exact. Managing the subscription payment process for some of America’s most trusted companies during the rise of the Internet required we get really smart, really fast and we had to evolve quickly, too.

We are definitely no stranger to change in this space and at this pace. We’re also no stranger to continuing to lead and service customers in a way they expect as the industry experiences some seismic shifts.

We’ve taken our decades of practice in managing recurring payments and refined our methodology for current times. Nowadays, we still serve many large publishing houses (the same ones we serviced in the 1980s) as well as other companies that might consider themselves part of the “subscription economy,” such as meal delivery businesses, real estate management companies, digital entertainment channels, and health care services.

As the industry consolidates, and others are focused on integrating people, solutions, technologies and methodologies we are focused on what we know and do best — making payments easy, safe and secure for our clients.

And, of course, we continue to innovate, and look forward to seeing what the rest of the year brings to the industry.