Follow Fiserv to never miss an important update.
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League have chosen Clover to handle payments across their stadium. Clover is Fiserv's cloud-based system that helps businesses manage sales and track inventory in one place. While a single stadium deal is small for a company of this size, it shows Fiserv is successfully taking its software into new markets outside the U.S. Winning sports and entertainment venues is a key part of the plan to move away from older payment hardware toward more modern, high-margin software.
Source: GlobeNewsWire
US retail sales grew by 1.2 percent in August, bouncing back after a drop in July. Spending rose in 12 out of 13 categories as back-to-school shopping helped offset the higher cost of gasoline.
This is a positive sign for Fiserv because its Clover system earns a fee every time a customer swipes a card at a local merchant. When people spend more at restaurants and shops, Fiserv's revenue grows automatically. This steady consumer activity helps support the company's shift toward its higher-margin software business.
Source: Bloomberg Markets and Finance
Fiserv is merging its financial and merchant segments into a single operating unit. Historically, these two arms, one serving banks and the other serving businesses, have operated separately. By bringing them together, the company aims to make it easier to sell its Clover payment software and banking services across its entire customer base.
This move is a logical step in the company's shift from selling hardware to selling high-margin software. Fiserv already has relationships with thousands of banks, and those banks often act as a sales force for its business tools. Operating as one company should help Fiserv move faster and reduce the friction of managing two different organizations, which supports its goal of growing profits more efficiently.
Teslar Software has added its automation tool to the Fiserv AppMarket, which allows banks to sync data more easily with their core systems. This integration helps bank employees avoid entering the same information into multiple systems by hand, which reduces errors and saves time. For Fiserv, this is a small but useful addition to its platform. By making it easier for third-party software companies to plug into its tech, Fiserv makes its own banking software more valuable and harder for banks to switch away from.
Source: Business Wire
Fiserv's data for August shows that small business sales grew compared to last year. The trend shows a split in how people shop: the number of actual visits to stores is down, but the amount spent during each visit has increased enough to keep total sales growing. This data comes directly from the millions of payment terminals Fiserv runs for small businesses. While this index is a useful pulse on the economy, it is a report on general consumer behavior rather than a change to Fiserv's own business model or financial targets.
Source: GlobeNewsWire
Management has a history of clearing its own targets by small margins, but two recent misses suggest the business is becoming harder to forecast as it shifts away from older hardware.