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Worldpay Inc. may be embroiled in combining its business with that of Fidelity National Information Services Inc., but that isn’t stopping the huge processor from seeking international expansion.
Cincinnati-based Worldpay said on Wednesday it will open two new offices in Australia and has obtained a license to acquire card payments in New Zealand. The company said it has had an acquiring license in Australia since 2016, having been one of the first nonbank operations to obtain one.
Worldpay’s Australian headquarters will be in Sydney, with a second office in Melbourne, the company said.
The effort is a bid to win a piece of a growing payments business in that region of the world, in particular a fast-rising e-commerce market. In Australia, e-commerce volume is expected to grow by 37% over the coming three years, reaching $40 billion in annual volume by 2022, Worldpay said. Some 20% of consumers in the two countries are now using mobile devices for shopping, according to Worldpay. That growth has already started to attract competitors, the company added.
“Our investment and addition of this new license [in New Zealand] will enable us to further provide unparalleled access to global markets to help -commerce businesses deliver on their international growth ambitions,” said Phil Pomford, Worldpay’s general manager for global enterprise e-commerce, Asia-Pacific, in a statement. Online retail, travel, digital content, and online gaming will be among the first targeted industries, Pomford told Reuters in a separate interview.
Worldpay already processes Australian transactions for a number of online enterprises, including the online travel agencies Webjet and Lonely Planet. It also handles transactions for the online social-gaming company Virtual Gaming World, the Reuters report said.
While Worldpay manages this expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, it has plenty on its plate at home now that it has agreed to be acquired by Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS in a $43-billion deal. That acquisition is expected to close in the second half of the year. The company was known as Vantiv Inc. until its acquisition early last year of the United Kingdom’s Worldpay plc.
