Ask anyone in payments how business is going and you will usually hear about volume: how much money moved through the platform, how quickly it grew, how many merchants signed up. It is a fair thing to be proud of. But when a buyer prices a payments business, volume is not the number they lean on. They ask something simpler. Out of everything that flows through, how much does the company actually keep?
Recent deal activity points the same way. KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech reports that payments attracted $44.2 billion of investment in the first half of 2026, against $20.2 billion across the whole of 2025. Most of that increase came from a single transaction, Global Payments’ $24.3 billion acquisition of Worldpay. Deal numbers tell the rest of the story: 168 payments deals in the half against 577 in 2025, a significant reduction. KPMG describes investors and buyers as favouring “scaled, profitable, and infrastructure-focused businesses”. When capital concentrates in fewer and larger transactions, each valuation carries more weight, and so does the basis on which revenue is measured.
That is why diligence starts with comparing like with like. Payments providers report revenue in different ways. Some show the full amount charged to merchants, including fees passed through to card networks and issuing banks, while others report only what they keep. The difference largely reflects a judgement on whether the provider acts as principal or agent, rather than a free choice. To illustrate, imagine a provider charges a merchant 2.5 percent on each sale and passes 2.0 percent on to the networks and banks. Its gross revenue is 2.5 percent of volume, but its net revenue, after those pass-through fees, is 0.5 percent. Even that is not profit: processing and sponsor-bank costs still sit below it, so for larger businesses gross profit or EBITDA is the cleaner anchor. Two businesses with the same volume can look very different on the headline line while earning much the same, or the reverse. Any comparison of margin, growth or valuation should therefore be made on net revenue, after those pass-through costs. A multiple applied to gross revenue is not comparable with one applied to net revenue, and mixing the two is one of the quickest ways to misjudge a business.
Public markets show how far the basis moves the multiple. In 2025, Shift4 reported gross revenue of $4,180 million, revenue less network fees of $1,981 million and gross profit of $1,354 million. At an enterprise value of $8,349 million (Capital IQ, 29 October 2026), that is 2.0x gross revenue but 4.2x revenue less network fees. Because gross revenue is roughly double net revenue, the net multiple will be about double the gross one: the same company, two very different multiples. The arithmetic is identical for a mid-market processor with EUR 30 million of net revenue; only the zeros change.
The next question is whether that net revenue will last. Interchange regulation continues to develop in several markets, but it is worth being precise about who it touches. Caps and settlements change what flows to issuing banks, but they do not by themselves set a payments provider’s margin. What they do is shift the fee environment in which providers price, and the effect on any one provider depends on its pricing model, how much it passes on to merchants and how much it retains. For a buyer, the sensible approach is to test how net revenue behaves if underlying fee levels move, rather than assume a direct link.
Due diligence will follow the same pattern. Buyers will separate payments revenue from software and services revenue, match volumes, rates, refunds and settlements to the books, and look at dependence on a single processor or sponsor bank. They will also isolate interest or float income, now that the period of zero interest rates is behind us. Strong retention is convincing only once the churn behind it has been explained customer by customer.
On who is buying, strategic acquirers lead. FTI Consulting, using Capital IQ data, reports that across global M&A in the second quarter of 2026, strategic buyers accounted for 83.6 percent of disclosed transactions by deal count and financial buyers for 15.1 percent. KPMG’s review of US financial services M&A for the same quarter found that strategic acquirers made up most of the deal volume and value, while private equity value fell sharply. Neither measure is specific to payments, so both are best read as context for the sector rather than a payments split. Recent payments transactions support the point. Nuvei’s $2.75 billion acquisition of Payoneer shows continued demand for payments infrastructure, and Mollie’s acquisition of GoCardless shows the value buyers place on multi-rail offerings beyond cards, as account-to-account, alternative and local payment methods gain share.
In our view, a market that compares like with like is a healthy one: it rewards well-run businesses and gives sellers a clear way to stand out. The ones that do best can show net revenue that reconciles to their accounts, retention proven customer by customer, and no dependence on a single processor or sponsor bank. That turns a growth story into a durability story, which is what a buyer pays for.
For advisors and investors, the practical takeaway is simple. Put businesses on the same net revenue basis before comparing them, test how that revenue holds up if fees or volumes move, and treat preparation as part of the price, because clean numbers ready before a process begins often place a business higher in its range.