Fiserv named Co-President Takis Georgakopoulos as chief executive on Monday as current CEO Mike Lyons resigned from the company to return to banking, capping a tumultuous 13 months in the role.

Georgakopoulos joined Fiserv in September 2024 and was elevated to co-president last year in a management shuffling Lyons oversaw as a part of a major restructuring at the company.

The Milwaukee-based company suggested in a Monday press release that it’s counting on a new leader to drive change. That’s at a time when it has struggled to meet investor expectations.

Georgakopoulos “has driven meaningful progress in modernizing our merchant platform, accelerating Clover, and embedding AI across our infrastructure,” the company said in the release announcing the change. “He is the right leader to guide Fiserv in an industry being reshaped by rapid advances in technology, innovation, AI, and cybersecurity.”

Georgakopoulos, a former JPMorgan Chase executive, is well known in the payments and banking industries. When he left JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank, Georgakopoulos was global head of payments and had been with the company for 17 years, first joining as the head of corporate strategy in 2007.

Fiserv first hired Georgakopoulos in June 2024 as a senior advisor and member of the management committee, according a press release at that time, but it soon promoted him.

By April of last year, Georgakopoulos had become an executive vice president and the company promoted him that month to chief operating officer, replacing Guy Chiarello. A few months later in October, he became a co-president, along with former Optum Financial Services CEO Dhivya Suryadevara.

Lyons tenure

Lyons will become the CEO of Truist Financial on Sept. 1, according to a separate Monday press release put out by the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank.

Five months into his tenure, Lyons ordered what he called a “critical and necessary reset” for the payments processor in late October on the same day the company reported “disappointing” third-quarter earnings results in which net income and revenue fell below analysts’ outlooks. Lyons also announced a slate of new senior leaders, with a new chief financial officer and two new co-presidents, plus three new directors.

The company had embedded unrealistic assumptions in its guidance regarding volume growth, sales activity and broad productivity improvements, Lyons told stock analysts at the time. Last month, he reiterated the need for setting a new course this year.

“We recognize the last year has been challenging and we don’t take that lightly,” Lyons said May 14 at the company’s investor day presentation in New York. “In response, we’ve made meaningful change across our leadership, our culture and how we show up for our clients.”

Fiserv management found “no major new surprises” since last fall, Lyons said during his remarks at the four-hour investor presentation last month.

The payments processor and financial infrastructure firm handles about 300 billion annual transactions for merchants and other customers, according to its investor day presentation. Fiserv sells its solutions to a variety of banks, including PNC and Wells Fargo, plus large merchants, such as AT&T, Chick-fil-A and Costco Wholesale.

Fiserv tapped Lyons, the former president of PNC Financial Services, as president and incoming CEO in January 2025 to succeed Frank Bisignano, whom President Donald Trump chose to run the Social Security Administration. Lyons didn’t take the top post until May of that year, when Bisignano was confirmed by the Senate to head the federal agency.

Moving through a ‘transition’ year

Under Lyons, Fiserv has been revamping its approach to clients and rebuilding sales in several of its primary business lines, including its Clover point of sale franchise, a key growth pillar for the company.

Lyons designated 2026 as a “transition year” last month when the company released its first-quarter earnings report. Revenue is expected to dip to a “trough” in the current quarter before rebounding later this year and in 2027, he said.

Fiserv shares have dropped about 70% over the past year as the company stumbled, and was sued by shareholders over its shortcomings.

Fiserv’s point-of-sale business Clover, which it acquired in 2019 as part of its First Data acquisition, gave a big push to growth ambitions in recent years. But Clover became a lightning rod for criticism last year, including investor lawsuits against the company, when it appeared not to be living up to comments made by company executives for growth expectations.

Fiserv has also come under pressure from an activist investor, Jana Partners, that said it should consider divesting some of its assets and appointing new board members, according to a report last week from media outlet Reuters.

Jana Partners Managing Partner Scott Ostfeld called on the Milwaukee company to sell off assets that aren’t core to its business when he spoke at an activist investor conference hosted by Wolfe Research last Tuesday, Reuters reported.Ostfeld also suggested Fiserv should add directors with experience in the areas of banking software and payments, the media outlet reported. A Fiserv spokesperson declined to comment last week on the Reuters report.