Dive Brief:

• Global Payments is leaning into its rollout of the Genius brand worldwide to increase its payments volume and revenue, CEO Cameron Bready said Wednesday in discussing the company’s third-quarter earnings results with analysts. 
• The Atlanta-based payments processor’s third-quarter revenue climbed a half percent to $2 billion, according to a Wednesday earnings release, even as it finishes swallowing the acquisition of Worldpay, a $24.25-billion deal the company expects to complete in the first quarter of next year,
• “Genius continues to be a very significant focal point for us in terms of driving growth in our business,” Bready said on the webcast regarding the financial results. “We have incremental market expansion opportunities in 2026 that we're looking to deliver.”

Dive Insight:

Global Payments has been consolidating its point-of-sale hardware and related offerings under the Genius brand this year. The unified Genius marketing began during the second quarter after the company spelled out the strategic shift last year. 

The company’s third-quarter report suggested it’s making progress on the strategy. The Genius brand has been rolled out in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the U.K. and Austria, according to the earnings presentation, with an extension into Germany expected by the end of this year. Next year, the company expects the brand to be in Ireland, Spain and the Czech Republic with a further extension sometime thereafter into Romania, Poland and Australia.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority gave its approval to the acquisition last month, a development that Bready called “a critical regulatory milestone” in the release.

Adjusted net income, taking into account the Worldpay acquisition and the sale of the company’s issuer business to Fidelity National Information Services for $13.5 billion, rose 5.3% to nearly $783 million, according to the release. Meanwhile, adjusted net revenue rose 3% to $2.43 billion.

When asked about its payments volume, Bready noted that the future expansion of Genius will depend, to some degree, on the macroeconomic environment. The global economic outlook has been roiled this year by the U.S. tariff war, rising inflation and a volatile U.S. stock market.

“As we continue to make progress with Genius, we expect to be able to drive incremental uplift in volume, all else being equal, across what's happening in the macro environment,” the CEO said. “As you can imagine, a lot of different factors sort of shape the ultimate sort of volume growth we see in the business.”