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The big payments processor Worldpay early Wednesday and late Tuesday announced two major deals, one of which will see it supporting multichannel payments for HMV, a London-based seller of DVDs, audio cassettes, CDs, and other entertainment products through a chain of more than 100 stores.
The other development, announced late Tuesday, is an agreement to let users of the Alchemy Pay cryptocurrency platform buy and sell digital currencies with Visa- and Mastercard-branded credit and debit cards. The Alchemy Pay exchange, based in Singapore, says it supports transactions in 173 countries.
The deals are the latest Worldpay has consummated following an agreement announced last summer by its parent company, FIS Inc., to sell a 55% interest in the processor to the private-equity firm GTCR in a deal valued at $18.5 billion. The sale is expected to close early next year.
HMV, which operates in Ireland and Belgium in addition to the U.K., will rely on FIS as well as FreedomPay, a payments-technology specialist based in Philadelphia, to handle the flow of payments it receives from various countries and through the pipes of various processors and in various currencies, online as well as in-store. Still, the entire setup depends on a single integration, FIS says. The service is live now in the merchant’s stores in Dublin and Antwerp, the company says.
HMV views the so-called omnichannel capability for payments as an essential prelude to a planned expansion across Europe. “We needed a solution that would … bring us into new markets simply and efficiently,” said Darren Houghton, the retailer’s head of IT, in a statement.
In the arrangement with Alchemy Pay, the exchange will get access to Worldpay’s Visa and Mastercard rails, enabling users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with their cards. The exchange says it manages payments in more than 50 fiat currencies through major-brand cards as well as through Google Pay and Apple Pay. In the U.S. market, it has acquired payment-services licenses in Iowa and Arkansas.
In a statement, Robert McCracken, ecosystems lead at the exchange, said the deal with Worldpay will “advance the mainstream accessibility of crypto and digital assets.”
Alchemy Pay has been active in recent years in making arrangements with major merchants and processors to enable retail payment options. In one big development, it agreed in 2020 to support a so-called hybrid service for the e-commerce giant Shopify Inc. that lets consumers use digital or fiat currencies to make purchases.
