Your Tech Story

payment processing services

Adyen

Adyen – The Leading Online Payment Processing Service Providers.

Online payments have made banking and online shopping way easier. Now we can easily make payments to people sitting miles away without visiting the bank, saving time and money on travel. Buying things online and making payments through credit cards/debit cards have made things simpler. Other than credit cards and debit cards, apps are also some online payment methods that not only allow easy transfer of money but also allow bill payments, like electricity or broadband. The successful online payment through the cards, wallets, or payment apps depends on the gateway or the payment processor the platform uses (responsible for the security at the same time). Companies like Adyen are behind such payment processors that make every online transaction possible and secure.

About Adyen

Adyen is a Netherlands-based payment company with its headquarters based in Amsterdam. The company was founded in 2006, and since then, it has been providing e-commerce, mobile, and point-of-sale payment services. Payment service provider, gateway, risk management, local acquiring, point of sale, issuing are the major services by Adyen, which works on payment methods like a credit card, debit card, online banking, etc. Other than Amsterdam, Adyen has its branches in cities like Berlin, Brussels, Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Manchester, Melbourne, Mexico City, Milan, Mumbai, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Warsaw.

As per the 2020 records, the Adyen made annual revenues worth €684.2 million, and over 2300 people are working for it. In 2015, the company became the sixth largest European unicorn with a valuation worth $2.3 billion.

Adyen
Image source: www.rudebaguette.com

The Founding

Some of the Bibit ex-employees founded Adyen in 2006 after gaining enough experience in the field of online payments. The team included Pieter van der Does (CEO at Adyen) and Arnout Schuijff (Adyen CTO). Till the year 2012, the company was struggling to get a hold on the payment market in the Netherlands. But the real growth of the company started in 2011 when it started to expand globally. In the period of four-five years, Adyen opened offices in San Francisco, London, Paris, and many other cities of European countries. In 2016, the company reported a 99 percent growth in gross revenues as it made revenues worth $727 million that year.

In 2015, the company was valued at $2.3 billion, becoming the sixth largest European unicorn. The next year, Forbes ranked the company #10 in its Cloud 100 list and #5 in the same list in 2017. By 2017, It had gained acquiring licenses in pan-European, Brazil, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, etc. The company also received the European banking license in 2010, such that it had gained the status of an acquiring bank.

Adyen had its first IPO in 2018, and it went public on Euronext Amsterdam. The same year, the company bagged a partnership agreement from eBay, where the Company became the primary payment processing partner of the latter. In 2019, Adyen expanded its operations to Japan, India, and Africa as well as launched Adyen Issuing, a card (physical as well as virtual) issuing business. The company experienced a 51% increase in the annual revenue in the same year, as it made revenues worth EUR 497 million. In 2020, launched mobile Android POS devices for its global customers as a result of the outburst of Covid-19.

The CEO at Adyen

Pieter van der Does is one of the co-founders of Adyen and the current CEO at Adyen. He is a Dutch national and was born in 1968. Pieter has got a master’s degree in economics from the University of Amsterdam. His last job was at Bibit Global Payment Services, where he worked as the chief commercial officer. During his time at the company, he met the other co-founder of Adyen, and after Bibit was acquired by Royal Bank of Scotland in 2004, they decided to start Adyen. Pieter has been serving Adyen as the CEO from the inception of the company. Forbes ranked Pieter in its Forbes Billionaire list in 2020.

Total System Services

Total System Services – A Leading Provider of Payment Processing Solutions Since 1983.

Born in 1983, Total System Services (TSYS) primarily provides payment processing services to financial companies and retailers across the globe. TSYS is the provider of secure and innovative payment solutions to clients spread over 80 different countries. The company has around 200 active clients and the company strives to unleash every related payment possibility for them and their business. TSYS is headquartered in Columbus, Georgia, and operates with approximately 12,800 employees. The parent company of TSYS is Global Payments which is a relatively young company. TSYS is running under the leadership of M. Troy Woods since 2014.

The Founding Story of Total System Services

The story of every successful company begins with finding a solution to a problem faced in daily life. If a person is vigilant enough to understand the pain points of commoners, one will get multiple business ideas to eradicate these problems. Something similar happened almost 133 years ago that led to the foundation of TSYS. One of the biggest foundational strengths of TSYS is that it always puts the needs of people first and finds various ways to solve their problems.

Total System Services
Image source: www.tsys.com

The history of TSYS traces back to the events of 1888 when a manager of a textile mill saw that his employees didn’t have a safe place to save their money. This got him thinking about how he could solve the problem for one of his employees and ended up building her a bank which became a striking trailblazer. This was a very innovative solution and in 1959 this bank operated as a part of Columbus Bank and Trust. In 1974, it started processing one of Georgia’s first credit cards for other banks. The company eventually emerged as Total System Services Inc in 1983 and became a public company.

Partnerships and Acquisitions

In 1983, after TSYS became a publicly-traded company it started making many acquisitions and expanding its presence. The company after filing its first IPO still operated under Columbus Bank and Trust (now known as Synovus) and was finally spun off in 2007. In the meantime, TSYS acquired a company called Clarity Payment Solutions in 2004 for $53 million. TSYS also signed a partnership with Visa Inc which was back in 1995 to merge its merchant processing services with those of Visa. In 2004, TSYS also started processing credit cards issued by JPMC, another well-known American investment bank.

In the last ten years, the company made a handful of acquisitions starting from acquiring a 51 percent stake in the merchant acquisition business of First National Bank of Omaha. After the acquisition, the business was renamed TSYS Merchant Solutions and the company acquired the rest 49 percent in 2011. The company acquired another business called TermNet in 2011. In 2012, the company entered into a joint partnership with Central Payment Co. LLC. In the same year, the company also acquired ProPay, a Utah-based company. TSYS made a big acquisition in July 2013 as it acquired Netspend for $1.4 billion. Some of the other companies that TSYS acquired in recent years are TransFit, Cayan, and iMobile3. In 2019, TSYS came under the acquisition of Global Payments, an American company providing financial technology services.

About Global Payments

Born in 2000, Global Payments is a leading financial service provider based in Atlanta. Jefferey. Sloan is the CEO of the company and M. Troy Woods (CEO of TSYS) is the Chairman of the Boards. The stock of Global Payments is a component of the S & P 500 stock market index as is publicly traded in the NYSE as GPN. Global Payments is also a Fortune 1000 company and its biggest market is in North America followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. Global Payments have made plenty of acquisitions since 2000 but the merger with TSYS is the biggest acquisition in its history till now. In May 2019, Global Payments announced the merger with TSYS for $21.5 billion.

M. Troy Woods – CEO of Total System Services

M. Troy Woods is the CEO and President of TSYS who has significantly contributed to the company’s diversification strategies. Woods completed his undergraduate degree from Columbus State University and he also went to several banking schools including The Wharton School. Woods was a part of the Columbus Bank and Trust from 1970 to 1977 and again rejoined TSYS in 1987. Under the leadership of Woods, TSYS has become more of a people-centric company with a belief that payment should revolve around people and not the other way around.