Fiserv NASDAQ: FISV CEO Takis Georgakopoulos said the company is prioritizing customer service, platform stability, product simplification and faster execution of its technology roadmap as it works to improve performance across its Financial Solutions and Merchant Solutions businesses.
Speaking alongside Chief Financial Officer Paul Todd, Georgakopoulos said he has spent his first three months as CEO meeting with banking clients to assess whether the company’s strategy aligns with their priorities. He said clients have supported Fiserv’s core-banking strategy and investments in platform stability, coverage teams and customer service, while emphasizing the need for sustained execution.
Operating as One Company
Georgakopoulos said Fiserv is seeking to operate more cohesively across its segments in order to better use assets that serve both financial institutions and merchants. He cited the company’s issuing platform, debit network, StoneCastle deposit platform, Finxact ledger, Commerce Hub gateway and Vision Next issuing platform as areas where greater coordination could create growth opportunities.
“The way we were structured, we were underutilizing or under-leveraging those synergies,” Georgakopoulos said. Fiserv is organizing products by customer segment rather than by separate business divisions, he said.
The company is also conducting a review of all parts of its business to determine where it has a right to win against competitors. While the review is ongoing, Georgakopoulos said investments in platform stability and other operational improvements will continue regardless of its eventual conclusions.
Financial Solutions Turnaround and Portfolio Simplification
In Financial Solutions, Georgakopoulos said long sales cycles mean current client departures can reflect service problems from years earlier. Still, he said the number of clients leaving Fiserv and the dollars associated with those departures were “down quite significantly” year to date in 2026 compared with 2025.
He attributed the improvement to better platform stability, coverage and service. The company has also shifted conversations with banks away from core conversions and toward services that can add value, including issuing, Clover, Cash Flow Central, artificial intelligence and other products.
Fiserv has divested two businesses and expects to continue evaluating standalone operations that do not meet its growth or margin objectives. Georgakopoulos said a major part of Project Elevate involves consolidating duplicated products and technology stacks accumulated through acquisitions.
For example, he said Fiserv previously had 14 merchant gateways. The company has selected Commerce Hub as its target gateway architecture and has shifted more than 80% of its technology resources toward its development, while maintaining other systems ahead of eventual decommissioning.
Project Elevate, Margins and Technology Spending
Management said Project Elevate has identified $500 million in savings and is expected to contribute 200 basis points of cumulative margin expansion over several years. Georgakopoulos said the opportunities mainly stem from overlapping products, projects and capabilities, as well as artificial-intelligence deployment in technology and operations.
Todd said Fiserv’s cost base is roughly 60% fixed, supporting natural operating leverage of about 50 basis points. The company expects Project Elevate’s margin benefits to be back-loaded, with the expected 2029 impact nearly twice the impact projected for 2027.
The company also disclosed an incremental $100 million technology-infrastructure investment, primarily in Financial Solutions. Georgakopoulos said the investment followed testing against Frontier AI models and was intended to accelerate remediation of security vulnerabilities as advanced AI capabilities become more widely available. Todd said Fiserv expects to manage its expense base to absorb the spending while continuing to target annual margin expansion.
Growth Outlook for Clover and AI Products
Todd said Fiserv expects adjusted revenue to decline 1% to 3% in the third quarter due to non-recurring comparison dynamics, followed by mid-single-digit growth in the fourth quarter. He said sequential improvement is expected across segments, and management has a high level of visibility into implementation schedules.
Management said the fourth quarter should provide a cleaner comparison between reported revenue and underlying business volumes. Todd said Clover volume growth is already at the low end of the company’s 10% to 15% target range, while revenue growth adjusted for certain items is at the low end of its 15% to 20% target.
- Potential Clover growth drivers include Clover Capital, Clover Cash, additional value-added services and migration of customers from older systems.
- Fiserv is expanding Clover’s ability to serve larger and multi-location small businesses, a capability Georgakopoulos said is expected early next year.
- The company has partnered with Tabit for high-end restaurants and Rectangle for healthcare to add specialized software to Clover’s offering.
Georgakopoulos also discussed agentOS, an AI offering designed to help banks automate processes while retaining human oversight. He said Fiserv sees the product as both an AI solution and an orchestration layer linking bank functions to core systems, with monetization expected through the platform’s economics and value-based pricing for automation.
Capital Allocation
Todd said Fiserv’s first capital-allocation priority remains reducing leverage below 3 times. The company is targeting a 2.5-times to 3-times leverage range over the 2027-to-2029 cycle, citing the importance of maintaining its investment-grade rating.
After deleveraging, Todd said the company’s highest priority for excess free cash flow is share repurchases, particularly as EBITDA growth supports additional natural deleveraging. Georgakopoulos said buybacks would be a high priority once the company is below its leverage target, though management would also consider interest rates, the share price and other available uses of capital.
About Fiserv (NASDAQ:FISV)
Fiserv, Inc is a global financial technology company that provides payments and financial services technology to businesses, financial institutions and consumers. Its offerings support electronic payments, merchant acquiring, account processing, digital banking, money movement and other transaction-related activities.
The company's products and platforms include Clover, which provides point-of-sale hardware, software and payment services for small and midsize businesses; Carat, which serves larger merchants; and technology for banks and credit unions, including core processing, online and mobile banking, card services, bill payment and fraud-management solutions.
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