Fiserv promotes First Data, JPMorgan vet Frank Bisignano to CEO

Frank Bisignano, who engineered a technology-driven recovery at First Data before it was acquired by Fiserv last year, will shortly take Fiserv's top job as the company forges its coronavirus strategy.

Bisignano, 60, Fiserv's president and chief operating officer, will become CEO on July 1, replacing Jeff Yabuki, Fiserv said Thursday. Before joining First Data, Bisignano was co-COO at JPMorgan Chase, where he earlier served as CEO of mortgage banking.

"With the successful integration of First Data well underway, this is the right time for Frank to lead the next phase of the company’s evolution,” Yabuki said in a press release. He noted that Bisignano has been leading Fiserv's coronavirus response.

Yabuki will serve as executive chairman through the end of 2020.

Fiserv announced its succession shortly before reporting its first-quarter results. The company reported revenue of $3.77 billion for the period, up 151% from the prior year (the figure included $1.40 billion from the First Data acquisition). It withdrew its outlook for the year, citing the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

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Under Bisigano's leadership, First Data undertook a diversification plan over the past few years, turning its Clover point of sale system into a portal for new merchant services. This came as the traditional payment processing industry faced financial pressures, forcing many to undergo a rapid evolution from a point of sale hardware business to a broader focus on software and mobile technology.

That strategy helped First Data improve its financial performance — enough to lure Fiserv, which acquired First Data in 2019 for $22 billion. That acquisition was part of a dramatic round of consolidation involving large bank technology and payment processing companies, including FIS's $43 billion acquisition of Worldpay and a $21.5 billion Global Payments-TSYS deal that was more focused on payments.

All six of these firms faced pressure from relative newcomers such as Stripe and Square, which introduced lower-cost alternatives for smaller merchants to tap digital payments.

Yabuki, who is also 60, has been Fiserv's chief executive for 15 years, helping it become one of the world's largest financial services technology companies, with 44,000 employees, and spearheading early moves into innovation such as P2P payments as early as 2011.