First Data Corporation is a financial services company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The company's STAR Network provides nationwide domestic debit acceptance at more than 2 million retail POS, ATM, and at online outlets for nearly a third of all U.S. debit cards.
First Data has six million merchants, the largest in the payments industry. The company handles 45% of all US credit and debit transactions, including handling prepaid gift card processing for many US brands such as Starbucks. It processes around 2,800 transactions per second and $2.2 trillion in card transactions annually, with an 80% market share in gas and groceries in 2014. First Data's SpendTrend Report is a key shopping metric for national news networks such as WSJ, USA Today, ESPN, The New York Times, Vox Media, and Bloomberg.In October 2015, First Data returned to public markets, selling 160 million shares in the New York Stock Exchange’s biggest IPO of that year.
On January 16, 2019, Fiserv announced a deal to acquire First Data in all-stock deal with equity value of $22 billion. Fiserv completed the acquisition of First Data on Monday July 29, 2019.
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