Signals: Payments are cool again

Hello, Fintech Friends!

I think 2025 will go down in fintech history as the year when payments became cool again. And no, it’s not only because stablecoins finally became a thing. Last time, I wrote about Capital One’s acquisition of Discover, which is now nearly complete. With all regulatory approvals in hand, Capital One expects to close the deal on May 18, creating the largest credit card lender in the U.S. and, more importantly, a card network that can rival Amex in scale.

But there is more. Global Payments and FIS pulled off what can only be described as an NBA-style trade: Global Payments is taking over Worldpay, while FIS gets TSYS. Visa is moving beyond cards in its ambition to capture commercial and cross-border payments. Shift4 is stepping up to directly compete with Stripe and Adyen. Wise is aiming to move trillions by powering cross-border payments for major banks. And, if this was not enough, PayPal partners with Coinbase to bring stablecoins to commerce.

Oh, and the TWIF Index? It’s down year-to-date (-4.5%), but it is outperforming both S&P 500 (-6.1%) and Nasdaq Composite (-10.0%), thanks, in no small part, to Visa and Mastercard. So much for the idea that payments are a commodity. This space is cool again. LFG!

Jevgenijsp.s. Have feedback? Ping me on X/TwitterHappy to hear how we can improve this column!

There are five Brazilian fintech companies trading on the U.S. stock exchanges. Four of them are in the top 10 of the best-performing fintech stocks year-to-date: Stone (NASDAQ: STNE) +72%, Inter (NASDAQ: INTR) +58%, PagBank (NYSE: PAGS) +57%, and XP (NASDAQ: XP). Can you name the missing one?

This year, we decided to introduce new sections: stock performance and valuation multiples by category. Putting fintech companies into "buckets" is no trivial task, so please treat these sections as a "work in progress". We're also happy to hear feedback!

Global Payments (NYSE: GPN) and FIS (NYSE: FIS) just made a deal that feels more like an NBA trade than a business transaction. Global Payments will buy Worldpay from FIS and GTCR, and in return, it will sell its Issuer Solutions business to FIS. Global Payments will get $13.5 billion for its issuing business and will pay $22.7 billion to acquire Worldpay. Once the deal closes, which is expected in H1 2026, Global Payments will focus solely on merchant acquiring.

The rationale for the deal is simple: combining Worldpay’s enterprise clients and e-commerce strength with Global Payments’ SMB expertise to create one of the largest merchant acquirers in the world. The combined business will process $3.7 trillion in payments annually, comparable to Fiserv’s (NYSE: FI) $4 trillion and ahead of JPMorgan Payments' $2.6 trillion. For reference, Adyen (AMS: ADYEN) and Stripe processed $1.4 trillion each in 2024.

Worldpay, as we know it, came to life through the merger of U.S. Vantiv and the original British Worldpay in 2018. In 2019, the company was acquired by FIS. Global Payments is also notorious for growing through acquisitions, such as the $4 billion acquisition of EVO Payments in 2022. Now, Global Payments and Worldpay will attempt to merge into one company. However, with every such merger, technical debt and organizational complexity increase, and this one won’t be any different.

The big question is: will this help Global Payments reignite growth, or is it more of a defensive move? Adyen and Stripe, the new generation of acquirers, are growing fast and winning market share. It feels like it is only a matter of time before they overtake the incumbents in scale. Will the merger of Global Payments and Worldpay change this trend? I wouldn't bet on this. But this is a historic deal nonetheless.

Read more: Global Payments Announces Agreements to Acquire Worldpay

📈

Global Payments (NYSE:GPN) stock performance: -35% YTD, -41% 1Y

Visa (NYSE: V) held its Investor Day in February 2025, and they reminded everyone just how big they are. There are 4.7 billion Visa cards in circulation, and the company counts 14,500 financial institutions across the globe as its clients. In fiscal 2024 alone, Visa cardholders made over 300 billion transactions, spending $15.7 trillion. Nevertheless, even at this scale, Visa still sees more room to grow.

First of all, there’s still growth in consumer payments. Out of $41 trillion in global consumer spend, card networks captured just $18 trillion, with Visa taking $11.5 trillion. The rest is still in cash, checks, or account-to-account payments (or processed by domestic card networks). Visa masterfully drove the wave of digitalization of payments and is winning business from domestic schemes. However, over the long term, a bigger opportunity for Visa is in commercial payments, or what they call the "New Flows".

Visa sees a $200 trillion annual opportunity here (just to be clear, it's payment volume, not revenue), with $35 trillion in commercial card payments, and $165 trillion in money movement (think B2B payments, payouts, AP/AR). To pursue the money movement opportunity, Visa is ready to move beyond cards. Thus, the cornerstone of Visa's offering in commercial payments is Visa Direct, a group of products powering payouts, peer-to-peer transfers, and cross-border payments. Companies like Cash App and PayPal already use Visa Direct for moving money domestically.

On the cross-border side, Visa works with MoneyGram, Western Union, Remitly, and more. Visa is also building its account-to-account capabilities through Tink, which it acquired after regulators blocked the Plaid deal. Visa doesn’t process account-to-account payments directly, but offers open banking connectivity and fraud tools. In fiscal 2024, Visa processed just $1.7 trillion in commercial card payments and around 10 billion in Visa Direct transactions, so these are very early days for Visa in this pursuit.

Read more: Visa Investor Day 2025

📈

Visa (NYSE:V) stock performance: +6% YTD, +21% 1Y

Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR) also held its Investor Day in February 2025, and it’s clear they’ve outgrown their restaurant roots. In 2024, restaurant merchants contributed less than one-third of Shift4’s total processing volume, a sharp contrast to 2021, when serving restaurants was the core business. I would even say that comparing Shift4 to Toast is becoming increasingly outdated. The company has evolved into a full-scale payments player, ready to take on both SMBs and enterprise clients across many industries.

However, the key takeaway from the event was the launch of the "Unified Commerce" offering, a product suite designed for enterprise merchants operating online, offline, and across borders. "Unified Commerce" essentially puts Shift4 in direct competition with the likes of Stripe and Adyen, as well as the incumbents like Worldpay, Fiserv, and JPMorgan Payments. Even the product’s pitch, "one platform, one integration", feels like a direct echo of Adyen’s go-to-market messaging.

What sets Shift4 apart is its deep understanding of SMBs that sell offline, something that Adyen and Stripe can’t quite claim. While Adyen built its brand catering to large global merchants, and Stripe focused on digital-first businesses, Shift4 spent years mastering the complexities of small business payments, especially in high-touch, service-driven industries, such as restaurants and hospitality.

Shift4 gets a lot of criticism for growing through acquisitions, and, perhaps, their software offering isn’t as broad as Toast’s. But you have to give them credit for the scale they’ve built since the IPO, and for the ambition to evolve from where they started. With over $165 billion in annual payment volume and a push into enterprise with the "Unified Commerce" product, Shift4 is going after the big league. And this will be an exciting journey to follow.

Read more: Shift4 2025 Investor Day presentation

📈

Shift4 (NYSE:FOUR) stock performance: -22% YTD, +36% 1Y

Wise (LON: WISE), the UK-based fintech known for low-cost international transfers, held its Investor Day in April 2025 (yes, this year has been rich in investor days). The company now serves 15.5 million customers and moved £145 billion in cross-border volume over the last year. In Brazil, they are already "bringing more transfers in and out of the country than any other local bank". While cross-border payments are still core, Wise is now much more than a remittance service.

The Wise Account, offering multi-currency balances, local account details, and cards, is gaining traction. Almost 50% of personal customers and nearly 60% of business clients now use the Wise Account. In fact, in fiscal year 2025, Wise Account brought in around 38% of the company's underlying income. This income includes interchange, interest income (only the first 1% is counted towards the "underlying income"), and other fees. Wise aims to "build the world's best account for managing and moving money internationally."

But the Wise team is thinking even bigger. Wise estimates that consumers and businesses move about £32 trillion across borders each year (£3 trillion from consumers, £14 trillion from small businesses, and £15 trillion from large enterprises). And they want to "move trillions" by powering cross-border payments for Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks with their Wise Platform. They already enable cross-border payments for Nubank in Brazil, Monzo in the UK, and Bunq in the EU. Plus, they’ve started working with Standard Chartered in Asia.

Wise has spent years building its own payments infrastructure and securing licenses around the world, and now it’s finding new ways to monetize that foundation. The company doesn’t lack ambition, a track record of strong execution, or the financial muscle to back it up (profit before tax jumped from £44 million in fiscal 2021 to £560 million in fiscal 2025). Sure, there’s always the risk that stablecoins (or Visa Direct) could disrupt how money moves across borders, but until that happens, I believe Wise will keep delivering impressive results.

Read more: Wise 2025 Investor Day

📈

Wise (LON:WISE) stock performance: -9% YTD, +24% 1Y

Last, but definitely not least, in this wave of payments news (and, perhaps, my favorite development) is PayPal partnering with Coinbase to drive stablecoin adoption. If there are two companies that could actually move the needle on stablecoins in commerce, it’s these two: Coinbase brings the crypto-native user base, and PayPal brings over 20 million merchants worldwide.

Under this new partnership, Coinbase users can now buy, sell, and trade PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin with zero platform fees, and redeem it 1:1 for U.S. dollars directly on Coinbase. But the collaboration goes beyond simple trading. PayPal and Coinbase plan to co-develop stablecoin-based payment solutions aimed at real-world money movement, especially in commerce, and explore DeFi use cases for PYUSD onchain.

In late 2024, PayPal enabled U.S. merchants to use crypto by letting business accounts buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies. Merchants could also send and receive crypto onchain, using external wallets. As it turns out, this was just the first step in PayPal's strategy. Stablecoins have long promised to transform payments, but adoption in everyday transactions has lagged. With PayPal and Coinbase now working together, 2025 could be the year stablecoins finally start to fulfill that promise.

Read more: PayPal and Coinbase Expand Partnership to Drive Innovation

📈

PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) stock performance: -23% YTD, 1% 1Y