Topline
Milwaukee-based financial company Fiserv’s stock collapsed more than 40% after cutting its earnings outlook and disclosing a sharp slowdown in its payment business, deepening investor concern amid an ongoing lawsuit over alleged inflated growth claims tied to its Clover platform.
CHONGQING, CHINA – APRIL 20: In this photo illustration, the logo of Fiserv, Inc. is displayed on a smartphone screen, with the company’s stock market performance and candlestick chart visible in the background, highlighting Fiserv’s role as a global leader in financial technology and payment solutions, providing services including digital banking, payment processing, point-of-sale systems, and fintech innovation to banks, merchants, and financial institutions, on April 20, 2025, in Chongqing, China. (Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Key Facts
Fiserv stock plunged 43.9% Wednesday, largely in a morning selloff, after the company cut its full-year outlook and CEO Mike Lyons acknowledged the firm is underperforming.
Growth in the Merchant Solutions segment, home to Fiserv’s Clover payments system, slowed to 5%, roughly half the pace of the previous quarter.
Clover helps small businesses take payments from credit cards, debit cards and mobile wallets, using various types of hardware devices.
Fiserv now expects 3.5% to 4% organic revenue growth for the full year, down from 10% in the second quarter.
The company also lowered its adjusted earnings forecast to $8.50-$8.60 per share for the third quarter of 2025, down from $10.15-$10.30 in the previous quarter.
Big Number
$30 billion. That’s how much the selloff wiped out more than in market cap for the company, dropping from $68.6 billion Tuesday to $38.4 billion as of Wednesday’s market close.
Crucial Quote
“Our current performance is not where we want it to be nor where our stakeholders expect it to be,” Lyons said.
Key Background
Fiserv faces a federal securities class-action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York that accuses the company of inflating growth figures for its Clover payments platform. The complaint alleges Fiserv forced merchants on its older and more affordable Payeezy system to move to Clover while claiming that growth came from new customers. Those migrations allegedly artificially boosted short-term revenue and transaction volumes forecasts which in turn hid slowing organic expansion. When many merchants decided to switch to lower-cost rivals such as Square and Toast, Clover’s performance faltered. According to the lawsuit, former CEO Frank Bisignano told investors in 2023 that 90% of Clover’s revenue growth would come from new merchants and just 10% from existing clients, even as the company moved roughly 200,000 Payeezy merchants to Clover through mid-2024. That shift helped lift Clover’s 2024 revenue to $2.7 billion on $310 billion in gross payment volume, but by early 2025, gross payment volume growth slowed to 8%, down from 14%-17% the year before. The slowdown deepened by July 2025 as Fiserv lowered its growth forecast for payments it receives from merchants from 11% to 9%, prompting analysts at Wolfe Research and Keefe Bruyette & Woods to question management’s credibility.
Tangent
Fiserv also announced an executive leadership and board overhaul, naming Takis Georgakopulous and Dhivya Suryadevera as co-presidents and Paul Todd as chief financial officer.
Further Reading
Plaintiff v. Fiserv Class Action Lawsuit
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinacastellanos/2025/10/29/fiserv-stock-crashes-44-heres-why/