Fiserv (NYSE: FI) is reportedly battling it out with Amadeus IT Group in order to acquire payments processor Shift4 Payments. This, according to an update from Reuters.
Publicly-listed Shift4, which claims a market valuation of about $7 billion, has been running a sales process during the past few months.
Fiserv and Amadeus have now come out as the primary contenders, with final offers expected to be submitted in the next few weeks, according to Reuters, which cited sources familiar with the matter.
Back in November, Shift4 Chief Executive Officer Jared Isaacman informed company shareholders that the firm had been looking into “strategic opportunities and alternatives.”
Global Payments was previously mentioned as a potential suitor.
Shift4, processes more than $200 billion worth of yearly transactions for over 200,000 merchants, including restaurants as well as hotels.
As noted by its management, Fiserv, Inc. claims that it is a leading global technology provider serving the financial services industry, “driving innovation in payments, processing services, risk and compliance, customer and channel management, and business insights and optimization.”
As covered last year, Fiserv, Inc., a global provider of payments and financial services technology, and Plaid, a data network at the forefront of the digital financial landscape, announced an agreement to enable secure and reliable data sharing through application programming interfaces (APIs), addressing growing consumer demand to access their financial information when, where and how they want.
Through this collaboration, consumers who bank “with the nearly 3,000 bank and credit union clients hosted by Fiserv will have secure, credential-less API-based connectivity to the more than 8,000 applications and services on the Plaid network via AllData Connect from Fiserv, allowing consumers to share their financial information with the third-party financial apps and services of their choice.”
The scale of this agreement is unprecedented “in the industry and will significantly expand the direct sharing of data between financial institutions and the third parties with which their customers interact.”