Hi all, Julie here. For the last couple years, consolidation has come up a lot in my conversations about fintech. But the chatter usually centered around rumored future tie-ups and a slow stream of deals, rather than a flood. Man, did that change in 2019.
First, there was payments consolidation. In January, Fiserv said it would buy First Data Corp. for $22 billion in a payment processing deal that marked one of the biggest financial mergers in a decade. Two months later, Fidelity National Information Services Inc. one-upped that deal with a $35.5 billion acquisition of Worldpay Inc. More recently, PayPal Holdings Inc. made its largest acquisition ever, the $4 billion purchase of coupon site Honey Science Corp.
