GPN vs AKAM Comparison

Global Payments is a leading provider of payment processing and software solutions and historically focused on serving small and midsize merchants. The Worldpay acquisition pushes the company into the large merchant space and expands the company's international operations. Following the Worldpay acquisition, the company will process almost $4 trilliion in payment volume.

Akamai operates a content delivery network, in which customers store content on distributed servers to deliver it to their own customers more quickly. Akamai has over 350,000 servers distributed over 4,350 points of presence in more than 700 cities globally. This network supports upward of 20% of global internet traffic, generating massive amounts of data. Using data generated by the delivery network, the firm offers cybersecurity products and cloud computing services, ranging from API security to zero-trust enterprise access, which has surpassed the delivery network in revenue and importance. As of 2026, the primary focus has shifted to offering computing hardware as a service, with an emphasis on serving large language model providers such as Anthropic.