It was two years ago when FIS announced the closing of its acquisition of global payments leader Worldpay, Inc. The acquisition created a global leader in technology and solutions for merchants, banks and capital markets. Worldpay with FIS, guides crypto exchanges through the complexities of global payment processing by bridging the gap between fiat and crypto. Worldpay’s card-to-crypto services enable crypto exchanges to leverage global card networks like Visa and Mastercard, to accept credit and debit card payments. The combined companies have over $12 billion in revenue and more than 55,000 employees. Not to mention one of the best looking business portfolios of solutions for payments, banking and other financial markets.
FIS is putting forth an enormous effort to build a global real-time payments network called RealNet.
“Other networks can instantly move funds across specific audiences and geographies but FIS’ vision of sending payments to anyone defined by the speed, size, destination and cost that meets their needs seem to be different”, said Sarah Grotta, Head of Debit Advisory at Mercator Advisory Service.
“While there are others that have already accomplished this, FIS brings massive scale and the necessary partnerships to make this impactful globally,” Grotta said. “Even in an era of API’s and cloud hosting, the prospect of developing a global super network across hundreds of different countries is immense, but FIS is uniquely positioned to create it”, said Raja Gopalakrishnan, Head of Global Real Time Payments at FIS.
“As we build RealNet, we’ll use the rails of some partners and some rails we’ll build ourselves,” he said, noting that FIS plans to forge agreements with major card networks and fintechs to support every type of payment at low cost and with broad transparency.
“In the first phase, RealNet is available to U.S. corporations and merchants leveraging FIS’ existing technology for real-time B2B payments, including cross-border transactions”. “U.K., EU corporations and merchants, will be the next group to access RealNet corporate payments later this year, with other regions expected to follow soon after,” Gopalakrishnan said.
Meanwhile Worldpay continues to work on bridging the gap between payments rails. Worldpay’s objective is to make fast, safe, convenient, credit, and debit cards payments for cryptocurrency. Thereby helping platforms gain new customers and boost transaction revenue. With RealNet, there will be seamless crypto payment processing that help reduce payment congestion and ensure all payments are processed seamlessly.
