WorldPay Aims to Double its Business by 2020 with the Funds from its IPO

When WorldPay rejected the bid from its French competitor Ingenico, it seemed to be a planned decision.

Recently, the Chief Executive Officer of WorldPay, Philip Jansen, told the Financial Times that they had always wanted to raise funds from the general public through an IPO instead of selling the business. With the help of the funds raised from the IPO, WorldPay is expecting to expand its business by 200 percent in the next five years.

According to the WorldPay CEO, the payment industry is now very “fragmented” and once his company gets access to public funds, it would help them to buy out smaller competitors and consolidate cutting edge payment technologies under one roof.” There are lots of consolidation options,” he said.

However, it appears that WorldPay is solely not relying on acquisitions to expand its business. It has already spent around US$600 million building a brand in-house new payment technology platform that is capable of handling 326 other payment solutions from around the world.

WorldPay can now deal with payments of a lot of regional competitors. For example, China based UnionPay, Russian next generation payment service Qiwi, and Boleto in Brazil are now compatible with the WorldPay payment platform.

This huge investment in the WorldPay platform is enabling the company to expand its client base in the international market. Recently, WorldPay helped Apple to develop a one-click payment system in China with its platform, which proved equally effective to help Airbnb expand its market in Brazil.

All this is being possible because of the expanding coverage of WorldPay that is increasingly supporting more and more payment methods.

With the IPO, WorldPay is expecting to raise around $1.35 billion. Most of the funds would go towards servicing existing debt. But, with the IPO, the WorldPay’s current private equity owners, Bain Capital and Advent International would effectively sell off a part of their ownership in the company. Most probably, at a higher price compared to what Ingenico was offering.

Since 2012, WorldPay’s EBITDA has grown over 10.9 percent per year and Philip Jansen believes that as more people would start using plastic or wallet based payment methods in the coming years, it would likely help WorldPay to continue their growth as well.