Fiserv NASDAQ: FISV President and CEO Mike Lyons said the payments and financial technology company is working to restore what he described as its historically predictable, mid-single-digit revenue growth profile after a difficult year for investors.
Speaking at a Bernstein-hosted discussion with senior analyst Harshita Rawat, Lyons said Fiserv’s review of its franchise last fall found that, excluding post-COVID cyclical benefits, the company’s growth profile looked more like its pre-pandemic pattern. He said the review also identified areas requiring action, including client service, product delivery, technology resilience and capital allocation.
“We know the last year has been difficult for our investors, and we don’t take that lightly,” Lyons said. He added that the review confirmed what management views as the underlying strength of Fiserv’s core businesses, including number one positions in digital banking, core banking, issuer processing and payments, along with leading positions in small business payments and enterprise.
Management Emphasizes “One Fiserv” Plan and AI
Lyons said the company launched its “One Fiserv Action Plan,” centered on a client-first mindset and five pillars intended to address operational issues and support growth. He said the effort has included leadership changes, greater accountability, cultural shifts, employee engagement and a broader embrace of artificial intelligence.
Lyons said Fiserv has built a leadership team that is roughly half new and half existing across an expanded group of about 40 to 50 leaders. He highlighted Dhivya Suryadevara, who leads financial services, and Takis Georgakopoulos, who leads merchant services, and said attrition among the company’s best-performing employees is at record low levels based on measurable history.
On AI, Lyons described a three-part approach: generating more revenue, reducing costs and improving client experience. He said AI is helping Fiserv turn its “systems of record” into “systems of greater value” through better data, higher authorization rates, lower fraud rates, data products and more personalized offers. He also cited opportunities in servicing, operations, application development and faster product delivery.
Lyons pointed to Fiserv’s OpenAI partnership announced at its Investor Day and said the company also reached a formal agreement with Cognition to use Devin, its software engineering agent, to help modernize core systems in Fiserv’s financial services business.
AgentOS Positioned as Bridge Between Banks and AI Agents
Lyons discussed agentOS, a product introduced at Fiserv’s Investor Day that is designed to help banks safely deploy AI agents and connect agents to bank systems. He said banks have raised concerns about allowing agents into core systems and personally identifiable information, while agent developers often do not want to handle regulated data directly.
Fiserv’s role, Lyons said, is to sit between banks and agents, managing items such as data masking, access controls and “kill switches.” He said agentOS includes an agent marketplace where third parties, banks, Fiserv or even competitors could create agents for bank use cases.
The product was co-developed with six banks, Lyons said, and two beta versions are live. He said Fiserv has received significant inbound interest from both banks and agent developers since Investor Day. Lyons said agentOS is not included in the company’s medium-term guidance but could expand Fiserv’s market opportunity in workflow automation and value-added banking services.
Clover Growth Remains Central to Merchant Strategy
In merchant solutions, Lyons said Clover is central to Fiserv’s path toward 6% to 8% revenue growth in the segment. The company has laid out targets of 10% to 15% volume growth and 15% to 20% revenue growth for Clover.
Lyons said the 10% organic volume growth target is based on Clover’s performance since 2022, when quarterly growth has generally ranged from 8% to 12% and averaged about 10%. He said incremental upside could come from converting non-Clover small and midsize business customers to Clover.
Growth drivers include greater horizontal capabilities, vertical expansion, international growth, improved customer experience and broader distribution, Lyons said. He cited Clover Capital, Clover Savings, ADP and Homebase as horizontal opportunities, and said Fiserv recently launched healthcare and professional services offerings. He also highlighted international growth in Canada and Brazil and said Japan is coming online with Visa and SMCC as partners.
Lyons said international volume now represents more than 20% of total Clover volume and is growing faster from a smaller base. He also said Fiserv has extensive distribution through approximately 3,000 independent sales organizations and 1,000 banks.
Fiserv’s non-Clover small business base remains a significant opportunity, Lyons said, with about $4 billion of revenue, 1.8 million SMBs and roughly $700 billion in gross payment volume. He described the base as stable and generally satisfied, saying Fiserv intends to be thoughtful about conversions rather than forcing customers to migrate.
Financial Services Focuses on Core Stabilization and Payments
Lyons said Fiserv’s core banking business has faced higher-than-desired attrition tied to past client service issues, missed product deadlines and forced conversions. He said the company has reversed course by supporting all cores, investing in client-facing personnel and technology, adding value-added services, and giving clients more choice in modernization paths.
He said management expects a gradual path from 2026 to 2029 toward more normalized attrition, noting that current results reflect decisions made in prior years because of long-dated contracts.
In digital payments, Lyons described the business as just under $4 billion in revenue and said Fiserv serves 41 of the 50 largest U.S. banks for payments. He said end markets remain healthy, supported by real-time, digital and embedded payment trends. Fiserv is working to unify multiple payment solutions into broader platforms for individual and business payments, with an intelligence layer to help determine the best payment method.
Lyons also discussed issuer processing, a roughly $3.3 billion revenue business, saying Fiserv has 25 of the 50 largest issuers and eight of the top 10 private-label issuers. He said the company is modernizing Optis, its major issuer platform, while developing Vision Next as a modern card core intended for embedded finance, international expansion and new issuing clients.
Emerging Opportunities Include Deposits, Stablecoins and Data
Lyons said Fiserv’s acquisition of StoneCastle supports the Fiserv Deposit Network, which connects cash holders with banks seeking deposits through fully FDIC-insured accounts. He said Clover merchants will be able to move idle cash through the Clover Dashboard into StoneCastle’s network to seek competitive rates, while banks can access insured operating deposits.
He also said StoneCastle brought stablecoin and cryptocurrency custody capabilities. Fiserv has created FIUSD, a stablecoin intended to help banks meet future regulatory requirements and offer stablecoin and fiat wallets within a single demand deposit account. Lyons said FIUSD is expected to go live in July, with an initial publicly announced use case in North Dakota involving bank-to-bank money movement through the Roughrider Coin, a white-label version of FIUSD.
Asked what investors may misunderstand about Fiserv, Lyons said the company is not trying to recover from a permanent loss of competitive position after a drop from double-digit growth. Instead, he characterized the post-COVID growth period as the anomaly and said Fiserv is trying to reclaim its historical identity as a mid-single-digit revenue grower that generates cash and double-digit earnings-per-share growth.
He also said investors may underestimate the revenue and cost opportunities from AI and the potential synergies from Fiserv’s mix of banking, issuing, large merchant and small merchant businesses.
About Fiserv NASDAQ: FISV
Fiserv, Inc, founded in 1984 and headquartered in Brookfield, Wisconsin, is a global provider of financial services technology. The company develops and delivers integrated solutions for payments, processing, risk and compliance, customer and channel management, and business insights and optimization. Serving thousands of clients, Fiserv supports banks, credit unions, securities broker-dealers, leasing and finance companies, and retailers.
Fiserv’s core offerings include account processing systems that automate deposit, lending and transaction processing for financial institutions, as well as digital banking platforms that enable mobile and online banking services.
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