TSYS’ $2.35B Bid To Go Omni

In a Tuesday (Jan. 26) announcement, TSYS, the payments solution provider, said that it will buy TransFirst from Vista Equity Partners for roughly $2.4 billion.

According to the announcement, TransFirst, which delivers merchant solutions, has a client base of more than 235,000 small and midsized business throughout the United States. The deal gives TSYS leverage into the omnichannel arena, with scale and size enough to become the sixth-largest acquirer in the United States, as measured by top line. The combined entity will support more than 645,000 merchant outlets. Key areas of focus will include prepaid programs, issuer processing and merchant services.

In reference to the financial impact of the deal, TSYS said that the acquisition would be immediately accretive to earnings per share in the low double digits, as measured through the 12-month period projected to follow closing.

In a management transition detailed in the release, John Shlonsky, currently TransFirst president and chief executive officer, will succeed Mark Pyke in the latter’s function as senior executive VP and president of the TSYS merchant unit.

The deal is expected to close within the second quarter of this year and is being conducted through an all-cash transaction. The $2.3 billion deal eclipses, by size, the $1.4 billion takeout by TSYS of NetSpend, which, at the time of acquisition, was active in the prepaid card space and was used primarily by consumers who lack access to bank accounts. As noted by the Ledger-Enquirer, the deal just announced brings aboard about 1,000 TransFirst staffers, adding to the ranks of the roughly 10,500 employees under the existing TSYS umbrella. The entity, post-acquisition, will process about 1.2 billion transactions every year, with a consolidated $117 billion top line annually.

Zuckerberg: Apple’s ‘Random Rules’ Hampering Meta’s Profits

Meta’s CEO criticized Apple for a lack of innovation and “random rules,” on a recent podcast.

And those rules, Mark Zuckerberg argued, hinder Meta’s profits, CNBC reported Friday (Jan. 10), citing comments made on an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

“On the one hand, [the iPhone has] been great, because now pretty much everyone in the world has a phone, and that’s kind of what enables pretty amazing things,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. 

“But on the other hand … they have used that platform to put in place a lot of rules that I think feel arbitrary and [I] feel like they haven’t really invented anything great in a while. It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now they’re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later.”

He argued that iPhone sales are flagging because consumers were waiting to upgrade their devices, waiting for more improved models.

“So how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically, like, squeezing people, and, like you’re saying, having this 30% tax on developers by getting you to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it,” Zuckerberg said. “You know, they build stuff like AirPods, which are cool, but they’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way.”

Meta last year offered advertisers a way to avoid the 30% service charge levied by Apple. The offer lets businesses that use boosted posts on Facebook and Instagram can go to those platform’s websites on mobile or desktop devices to boost their content and not pay the service charge.

PYMNTS has contacted Apple for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

In the podcast interview, Zuckerberg contended that Apple defends itself from criticism from other companies by saying it wants to protect user privacy and security. He added that it could solve that problem by improving its protocol, such as building better security and using encryption.

“It’s insecure because you didn’t build any security into it. And then now you’re using that as a justification for why only your product can connect in an easy way,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg added that if Apple stopped applying its “random rules,” Meta’s profit would double.

Apple and Meta reportedly considered working together last year, with the Facebook owner offering to integrate its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot into the iPhone. However, Apple apparently rejected Meta’s proposal following two brief discussions.