While much of last week’s power transfer at Truist – at least in this publication – focused on incoming CEO Mike Lyons, less attention went to the executives left running payments processor Fiserv, from which Lyons departed.

Fiserv named Takis Georgakopoulos as its CEO, effective June 14. If the name sounds familiar, that’s likely because Georgakopoulos spent 17 years at JPMorgan Chase – most recently, as the bank’s global head of payments. He left in 2024 to become a senior adviser and executive vice president at Fiserv but quickly ascended the ranks. The company named him chief operating officer in April 2025, then co-president in October.

But there’s another reason why longtime readers may recognize Georgakopoulos’ name: He is credited as the architect of a 2022 deal that gave JPMorgan a 49% stake in the Greek fintech Viva Wallet.

And there appeared to be no love lost from Viva Wallet CEO Haris Karonis when Georgakopoulos left JPMorgan.

“I hope that the recent leadership changes within JPMorgan Payments will provide an opportunity to restart constructive dialogue and to facilitate [Viva’s] growth,” Karonis wrote in a 2024 blog post.

Bad blood

Karonis sued JPMorgan that year, alleging Georgakopoulos’ deal created “perverse incentives” that motivated the bank to limit the fintech’s growth.

According to the deal’s terms, Karonis said, JPMorgan would be allowed to take full control of Viva if the fintech was valued at less than €5 billion by July 2025.

In documents filed with London’s High Court in early 2024, Karonis argued that Viva was being blocked from entry in the U.S. and some European markets to keep its valuation down.

Karonis also alleged that JPMorgan’s payments business was allowed to compete with Viva in some markets, further limiting growth.

At issue, at the time of the lawsuit, was a vast gulf in Viva’s valuation. JPMorgan and its valuer, Houlihan Lokey, valued Viva at €1 billion in early 2024, while Viva’s valuer, EY, put the fintech’s worth at €3 billion.

JPMorgan filed a counterclaim against Karonis over alleged efforts to “limit or circumvent our contractual and legal rights as an investor,” sources told the Financial Times at the time.

Bank executives asserted that Karonis failed to understand that valuations of fintechs like his own had plummeted in the two years after the deal was struck, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

A London judge in June 2024 ruled that Viva is subject to U.S. legal restriction but dismissed suggestions that JPMorgan had an incentive to depress the fintech’s value.

Lawyers for JPMorgan, at an expedited trial, said Karonis’s holding company, WRL, “manufactured a dispute” about Viva’s valuation to pressure the bank to renegotiate the deal, according to Bloomberg.

The ruling appeared to heal some of the rift.

In his 2024 blog post, Karonis said a valuation under the judge’s framework would “take into account Viva’s actual market position and a true set of financial projections, for both Europe and the U.S., extending to at least 2030, and properly captur[e] the Company’s full growth potential in those markets.”

“In finding for WRL, the ruling rejects attempts by JPMorgan to rewrite the shareholder agreement by causing the valuation to take into account certain regulatory restrictions that apply only to JPMorgan (and not to Viva),” Karonis said. “Those regulatory restrictions were likely to considerably distort the valuation process and unduly diminish the Company’s value up to 50% to the benefit of JPMorgan and against the interests of the founders and the more than 200 stock-option holder-employees.”

JPMorgan, too, called the ruling a “great outcome.”

“With a financial stake in the company, we have repeatedly offered ways to help the company expand and succeed,” a spokesperson for the bank told Reuters at the time. “The court has now provided a critical step to move forward with fair and transparent valuations — which could allow Viva to be sold soon, before the fintech M&A market further softens.”

Karonis said his aim was to “restore the Viva team’s faith and trust in JPMorgan.”

“I want a shareholder that respects the basic principles of corporate governance of a company, that does not create a toxic environment, and that prioritizes the Company’s best interests,” he wrote.

Holding onto executives

In addition to locking down Georgakopoulos, Fiserv retained other top executives. The payments processor promoted Dhivya Suryadevara, once co-president alongside Georgakopoulos, to president last week.

Also, CFO Paul Todd received a stock grant equal to $5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fiserv recommitted last week to growth goals laid out at a lengthy investor day presentation last month.

While the TD Cowen report flagged the Fiserv shuffle as “another layer of uncertainty,” others said the move makes sense.

“We view Takis as a logical replacement, as he has been in an executive role at Fiserv since 2024 and spent 17 years as a payments executive at JP Morgan Payments,” analysts at Baird Equity Research said in a note to clients.

Analysts at Cantor called Georgakopoulos “a strong candidate with extensive experience in payments/technology,” but said “the sudden nature of the transition is likely to catch some investors off-guard.”

Fiserv’s stock had dropped 70% in the year ahead of Georgakopoulos’s appointment. 

While the company has stated a goal to grow organic revenue by 1% to 3% this year, some investors, may view the CEO switch as an admission “that growth targets could remain difficult to achieve,” the Baird analysts said.