Fiserv overview

A global provider of technological solutions for payments and financial services is Fiserv Inc. The business offers merchant acquisition and processing, payments, e-commerce, card issuer processing and network services, account processing and digital banking solutions, and the Clover cloud-based point-of-sale system. The company’s segments include Payments and Networks, Financial Technology, and Merchant Acceptance (Acceptance) (Payments). The Acceptance division supports merchants of all sizes globally and offers a variety of solutions that enable commerce. Businesses may securely accept customer electronic payment transactions both online and offline thanks to acceptance solutions. The Fintech industry sector offers financial institutions all around the world the technological solutions they require to operate. The Payments section offers the goods and services needed to handle digital payment transactions to financial institutions and business clients all over the world.

Leslie M. Muma and George D. Dalton formed the business on July 31, 1984; its headquarters are in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Fiserv, First Data Processing of Milwaukee and Sunshine State Systems of Tampa, two regional suppliers of financial services data processing, merged to become Fiserv, the first significant U.S. provider of financial services, in July 1984. By identifying the appropriate resources to satisfy its clients’ technological needs, Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV) has expanded. In the name of innovation, the company created cutting-edge solutions, formed crucial commercial alliances, and acquired strategic entrepreneurial businesses.

George Dalton and Leslie Muma, who formed the business together in1984, are the parents of Fiserv. George Dalton and Leslie Muma, who formed the business together in1984, are the parents of Fiserv. Since the late 1970s, Dalton and Muma, who each ran their own data processing firm, had been attempting to combine their businesses. Early on, the buddies understood that they would need to build a big, national network of clients and service providers if they were to succeed in their cutthroat market. Dalton and Muma joined together in what would shortly become the nation’s fastest-growing financial data processing company after buying their companies through management buyouts (Dalton and Muma had both been functioning as subsidiaries of well-off parent corporations).

More than 100 clients were being served by the companies run by Dalton and Muma in1984, and they were bringing in more than $22 million per year. They tried to integrate the two subsidiaries under one corporate roof but were unsuccessful, so they took a bold gambit and went it alone. Muma and Dalton acquired their businesses from their parent company with the help of venture financing, then combined them to become Fiserv. They had to give the financiers 89 percent of their venture’s stock in order to pull this off. According to Dalton, “Eleven percent of anything is worth more than one hundred percent of nothing” (Forbes, April 1992).

Fiserv Becomes Public in 1986. Fiserv, a $70 million data processing business, goes public. After purchasing Minnesota On-Line, Inc. in1988, the company expanded its range of services by including credit union services and started working with some of the biggest financial institutions in the country in four years. Fiserv started offering shares to the public in 1986 to help finance its approach of making acquisitions of businesses using cash rather than debt. By the early 1990s, this method had cut the founders’ ownership stakes to just two percent apiece, but it had also allowed them to lower their debt loads and continue their aggressive expansion plans. Muma concentrated on creating a high-tech, effective, customer-focused business that could seamlessly integrate new acquisitions and the clients that came with them during the 1980s while Dalton began looking for fresh acquisition targets.

Fiserv’s explosive rise in the 1980s was largely a result of the transformation of the American financial markets. In fact, prospective Fiserv clients were increasingly looking for lower costs associated with centralized, automated data processing due to new technology, tax laws (including the Tax Reform Act of1986), increased competition, loosening of interstate banking rules, and other considerations. Because of this, the data processing sector as a whole expanded and underwent consolidation in the 1980s and early 1990s.

By the time Leslie Muma succeeded George Dalton as CEO in1999, Fiserv was averaging annual revenue growth rates of28%, EPS growth rates of20%, and net income growth rates of 31%.Fiserv stock, which had a value of $2.74 a share in1986, is now worth $52.68. Those who knew Dalton well were shocked by his decision to retire, but Muma anticipated that Fiserv would keep up its rapid growth rate. Fiserv intended to offer more and better services to customers as financial services increasingly came under one roof. Fiserv believed that its continued acquisitions, steady internal growth, and provision of data services to financial institutions would carry it into the future.

Fiserv Increases Capabilities for Electronic Funds GTE EFT Services Money Network and GTE ATM Networks, both situated in California, give Fiserv the opportunity to broaden our customer solution portfolio by supplying electronic funds capabilities. 1992 saw us enter the card fulfilment business by acquiring Data Holdings, Inc. of Indianapolis.

The acquisition of Citicorp was a reflection of the expanding scale of Fiserv’s clientele. Prior to1990, the company focused on smaller and mid-sized businesses, but in the early 1990s, it started serving a number of clients with annual revenues of $1 billion or more. More than 1,400 banks, savings and loans, and credit unions of all sizes were being served by Fiserv by 1991. Additionally, it had a huge increase in sales, reaching a staggering $281 million, from which $18.3 million in profit was made.

In1993, Fiserv continued to employ aggressive growth strategies. Two data processing companies owned by Mellon Bank were among the purchases it made in the beginning of that year. Due to this acquisition, Fiserv gained 200 new customers with annual revenue estimates of $70 million. Furthermore, compared to the average of Fiserv’s current clientele, the majority of these new clients had assets worth more than $300 million. The Fiserv acquisition of Basis Information Technologies, Inc., which resulted in the hiring of 1,000 additional employees, was the most significant event of 1993. In1993, Fiserv had historic growth; the company’s profits soared to more than $30 million, while sales increased by an astonishing 38%.’With the dedication and hard work of Fiserv people, we have grown this organization from two data processing centres in Milwaukee and Tampa employing less than 300 professionals to a company with locations in 61 cities supported by more than 6,300 industry professionals,’ Dalton and Muma wrote in the company’s 1993 annual report. Over 2,500 clients were served by us in1993, up from 170 clients in 1984 who received full-service processing from us. Our future will be built on a solid basis, and we have a clear plan in place to guide it.

The rest of the 1990s saw steady and remarkable development as banks outsourced back-office tasks to third parties as a result of ongoing downsizing, consolidation, and pressure to increase income. According to a consultant quoted in the May 1996 issue of ABA Banking, banks were starting to “see their business not as transaction processing, but as information management and delivery.” According to him, “the third party does processing but channels the information back to the bank so that the information becomes the primary currency.” Fiserv was there to gain from the increased interest in outsourcing; their revenue increased by another 25% to $51 million in 1994. By the end of1995, when Fiserv signed a multi-million dollar, 12-year strategic agreement with Chase Manhattan bank and a second alliance with State Street Bank in Boston, it was processing customer accounts for over 3,000 financial institutions and generating approximately $64 million in revenue annually. Fiserv recovered by securing a ten-year $1.6 billion deal to handle back-office operations for two major Canadian banks in1996, whereas the Chase contract was terminated when the bank merged with Chemical Bank a short while later. Additionally, it entered into a five-year agreement with the First Federal of California in 1998.

In 1995, Fiserv formed strategic partnerships with State Street Bank in Boston and Chase Manhattan Bank.

Fiserv increased its customer base from 5,000 to 5,000 between 1996 and 1998 while keeping its tried-and-true recipe for success—carefully selecting and integrating its acquisitions, giving them a lot of autonomy, and placing a strong emphasis on customer service. According to company policy, clients were surveyed twice a year regarding their interactions with Fiserv and their happiness was tied to business-unit directors’ income. Fiserv was expanding into more fields of the financial information services processing industry at the same time.

A deep-discount brokerage firm to a producer of software that allowed users to input trade orders over the Internet or touch-tone phone were among the six acquisitions the company made in 1997 that were tied to the brokerage sector. Additionally, Fiserv purchased companies that produced marketing, training, and seminar materials for the financial sector. It was expanded in 1998 to include an auto leasing software provider and a supplier of administrative software systems to insurance companies. Fiserv bought 11 additional companies in total in1998, boosting its overall acquisition total since 1984 to 73.

Fiserv introduced ePrimeFiserv, a subscription-based Internet service, in1999. It combined online banking, bill payment, investment and insurance products, automated cash management, back-office processing, and core-account processing into a single solution. TheLendingSite.com, which Fiserv also established, offered the technology foundation for Internet-based lending, including loan approval and credit card authorization. With the slogan “Where money and technology meet,” Fiserv launched a nationwide television advertising campaign to go along with its new approach. Launched in December 1998, Fiserv’s own corporate website served as another component of its branding strategy.

At the turn of the century, Fiserv started trying to grow internationally with 400 clients in 60 nations. The main three rivals in the domestic financial services sector—Fiserv, M & I, and Deluxe—were still seeing robust annual growth in that market, but bank mergers were shrinking their customer base. Additionally, data processing firms had new opportunities because of the privatization of banks in other nations and the European Union’s switch to a single currency in 1999. Financial service providers are expected to rise by 30 to 35 percent in various nations, including Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, in the upcoming years.

Launch of One Name, One Brand by Fiserv Our goal is to give our clients best-in-class results by offering integrated technology and service solutions. We established and gathered important alliances to guarantee that mission. In 2009, following a period of expansion and innovation, we created the name and brand Fiserv. It had more than 19,000 workers and was a $4.7 billion Fortune 500 corporation by 2009.

Fiserv said that it will spend $22 billion to acquire payment processor First Data, making it one of the biggest acquisitions in the financial technology industry. The price of the all-stock transaction is roughly 30% higher than First Data’s closing price. In early trade, First Data shares increased 17.1% to$20.55, while Fiserv shares decreased 5.4% to $71. 57.5 percent of the combined firm will be owned by Fiserv shareholders, and 42.5 percent by First Data shareholders. For every First Data share, Fiserv offered 0.303 of its own. Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the combined firm Jeffery Yabuki of Fiserv. Following the deal’s completion in the second half of 2019 in its first full year, the combined company’s adjusted earnings per share are anticipated to rise by more than20%, according to the companies. For First Data, J.P. Morgan Securities served as the financial advisor to Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Fiserv. On July 29, 2019, Fiserv completed the acquisition of the company.

Fiserv finalized the purchase of Bypass Mobile in 2020. Ondot Systems, Inc. (“Ondot”), a prominent digital experience platform for financial institutions, and Fiserv have signed a legally binding agreement to be combined. The purchase was finalized in January 2021. Fiserv successfully acquired NetPay to expand its capacity as a payment facilitator. In 2022, Finxact was fully acquired by Fiserv.

Other Acquisitions of Fiserv

• Software for financial institutions named AdviceAmerica.
• M-Com, a New Zealand company based in Auckland that was founded in 2000, created mobile banking apps.
• Maverick Network Solutions, a Delaware company situated in Brandywine Hundred was founded in 2006.
• CashEdge connects customers to payment options like Popmoney.
• DNA platform for account processing from Open Solutions, Inc. By incurring $960 million in debt, Fiserv paid $55 million to purchase DNA.
• ACI Worldwide’s Community Financial Services.
• Hewlett Packard’s Convenience Pay.
• Monitse
• Dovetail
• MoneyPass is a network for surcharge-free ATM and debit card processing that was purchased from Elan Financial Services, a division of US Bancorp.