Stephanie Ferris was chosen as the next CEO of FIS, making her one of the most powerful women in fintech

Ferris, who is currently president, will become CEO of FIS on January 1, 2023, according to a statement. Gary Norcross, FIS’s current executive director, will serve as executive chairman.

Ferris said she was honored to take on the CEO role from Norcross, who was named head of FIS in January 2015. “Thanks to the confidence placed in me by Gary and the FIS board, I am incredibly excited to lead the company into its future,” Ferris said, according to the statement. Dan Dolev, senior fintech equity analyst at Mizuho Securities USA, notes that “Ferris is the most experienced female executive in payments with a large company. I’m a big fan,” he said.

FIS is one of the world’s largest financial services, with a market value of 47 billion dollars. The Jacksonville company provides fintech software to merchants, banks and capital markets firms. It employs more than 65,000 people and generates around $14 billion in annual revenue. Shares of FIS have fallen 38% from their 52-week high of $125.04 in October 2021. On Tuesday afternoon, the stock was trading up 79 cents at $77.82.

Ferris’ ascension was expected. She is a former finance director at Worldpay. When FIS bought Worldpay in 2019 for $34 billion, Ferris joined as CEO. She became CEO of FIS in September 2021 and president in February. No other woman leads any of the major fintech companies, although some mentioned Amrita Ahuja, who is CFO of Block, the company formerly known as Square, as another high-profile female fintech executive.

Ferris has a proven track record of making payments and has made some good decisions, Dolev said. She was senior vice president and general manager at merchant bank Vantiv when it acquired Mercury Payment Systems, a payment processor, in 2014. “It was one of the best acquisitions in payments ever,” Dolev said. Vantiv and Worldpay merged in 2017 in a $10.4 billion transaction. Two years later, in 2019, when major global payment companies consolidated, FIS acquired the combined Vantiv-Worldpay. Fiserv bought First Data for $22 billion, while Global Payments picked up TSYS for $21.5 billion.

Ferris may also be more open to selling non-core businesses, Dolev said. He believes FIS should spin off Worldpay into a separate company. Worldpay offers payments while the old FIS offers bank processing software that competes with companies such as Jack Henry & Associates and Fiserv. Dolev does not see significant synergies between the units. Worldpay, since the sale to FIS, has also underperformed.

Dolev pointed to the restaurant sector, where he says Worldpay has lost market share to companies such as Toast, whose software helps restaurants accept credit and debit card payments. Worldpay doesn’t have a branded point-of-sale solution for restaurants like Fiserv has with Clover, which makes it more difficult to compete for small and medium-sized businesses, Dolev said. Since August 2019, when FIS closed the purchase of Worldpay, the stock has fallen 43%. “Vantiv-Worldpay is better off on its own. It’s a better value proposition as a stand-alone, and it’s a lot easier to fix problems when you don’t have to worry about everything else, Dolev said.

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