The biggest-ever divorce in FinTech: FIS ditches Worldpay 😳; Tinder date doesn't guarantee a relationship: Robinhood kisses goodbye to Ziglu 😢

FinTech is Eating the World, 14 February

Hey Everyone,

Happy Tuesday! Today’s issue is the Valentine’s Day special 💜 We’re looking at the biggest-ever divorce in FinTech as FIS ditches Worldpay (will unpack the underlying causes & problems, and see what might come next) and Tinder dates that don’t guarantee a relationship as Robinhood kisses goodbye to Ziglu (what it means & what’s next). Let’s jump straight into the fascinating stuff 🌶

P.S. We’re also going to look at the bullish case for Coinbase as Cathie Wood is buying the dip & remember why the bankruptcy of Genesis is alarming. You can’t miss this!

The biggest-ever divorce in FinTech: FIS ditches Worldpay 😳

The BIG News 📰 Global financial technology provider Fidelity National Information Services aka FIS FIS 0.00%↑ has officially announced it’s undertaking a tax-free spinoff of its merchant operations, the majority of which comes from Worldpay.

This is arguably the biggest corporate divorce in FinTech ever, so it’s definitely worth a closer look.

More on this 👉 We must remember that FIS created a payments powerhouse when it bought Worldpay for a whopping $43 billion back in 2019 (it was the biggest FinTech deal ever - see below).

At the time, Worldpay was the largest global merchant acquirer, focusing on payment processing technology and solutions for merchants. FIS' acquisition of Worldpay effectively gave it access to all of Worldpay's clients - adding to FIS' 20,000 global clients - and transactional data. This has hence enabled the firm to significantly build out its merchant services and tools, as well as strengthen its positioning as a leader in the global payments space. As an effect, FIS' revenues grew 13% to $3.19B in 3Q2020. Not bad 👏

So why spinoff then? 🤔 The truth is that corporate mergers fail more often than marriages. It seems that FIS & Worldpay isn’t an exception here too.

Let’s take a deeper dive into this unpacking the underlying causes and problems, and see what might come next (if anything) out of this.