Shift4 Payments experienced leadership upheaval this week as the company's chief financial officer switched roles with a board member and the founder's father resigned from the board.

CFO Nancy Disman resigned on Tuesday, telling the company’s board she’ll step down Sept. 1, and a member of the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based payment processor's board of directors, Christopher Cruz, will take her place, according to a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"It is with careful consideration that I made the difficult decision to retire from my role as CFO," Disman told investors during prepared remarks in a Tuesday earnings call. She will remain with Shift4 in an advisory role until the end of the year, she added.

Company founder Jared Isaacman's father, Donald Isaacman, also stepped down from the board of directors as of Tuesday, the filing said.

Jared Isaacman was tapped by President Trump to run NASA in December, but the president pulled his nomination in late May. The younger Isaacman returned to the company as executive chairman — he was previously the CEO — in June, and then president Taylor Lauber was named the new CEO.

Disman was named one of the company's board of directors, a position she will take after she officially steps down as CFO, according to the SEC filing. 

Her eventual replacement, board member Christopher Cruz, will take over the role the day she steps down. Cruz has been a member of Shift4's board since the company went public in 2020. The bulk of his previous experience is in investing, and he has been involved in multiple companies, according to Shift4's 2024 proxy statement. He served as a partner at the investment management firm Searchlight Capital and was a member of the investment team at Oaktree Capital Management, the proxy statement said.

Cruz will be paid an annual base salary of $500,000, along with a signing bonus of $2 million and the possibility of additional annual cash bonuses of $500,000.

Additionally, Jordan Frankel, who has been the company’s general counsel and executive vice president of legal, risk and compliance since 2014, according to Shift4’s latest proxy statement, will become the chief legal officer, the company said. Frankel will be paid a base salary of $335,000 under a new three-year contract, with the possibility of bonuses. He had the same base salary in 2024, the proxy statement said.

Donald Isaacman has been with the company since it was founded in 1999, and previously served as the company's president and had a place on Shift4's board of managers from 1999 to 2020, the proxy statement said.

The transition is unlikely to impact the company's bottom line, according to analysts.

"While the CFO change was unexpected, we do not expect any significant changes to operations, the [mergers and acquisitions] playbook or guidance philosophy given Chris Cruz's experience with the company," Stephens analysts wrote in a Wednesday note to investors.

Disman served on Shift4's board from 2020 to 2022, before she was named CFO. Prior to that, she was the CFO for the cloud-based technology company Intrado from 2017 to 2020, according to the proxy filing. She was also CFO of the payments companies Total Systems Services and TransFirst, the filing said. Disman replaced Bradley Herring, who joined Shift4 as CFO in 2019.

The resignation of a board member happening in conjunction with a CFO's decision to step down is unusual, but Stu Novick, analyst for the investment service Gimme Credit, says there doesn't appear to be part of a broader company problem.

"I don't think these things are ever perceived to be great for companies that are doing well, but I also don't think there is anything bad going on there," he said.

Novick noted that Disman won't step down right away. "The fact that she is sticking around and joining the board suggests to me that there’s nothing funny going on," he said.

A Shift4 spokesperson declined to comment on the CFO transition and the senior Isaacman's decision to step off the board.

Company executives also outlined the plans for Global Blue — a Swiss hospitality payment services provider that Shift4 finished acquiring in July — in Tuesday's earnings call.

The Allentown, Pennsylvania-based payment processor intends to market its payment products to Global Blue's customers, particularly Shift4's SkyTab point-of-sale system, Shift4 CEO Taylor Lauber said in prepared remarks during the earnings call. The company aims to add 45,000 more merchants to SkyTab by the end of the year, he said, although he did not say how many the processor has added to the POS service so far in 2024.

"I have already personally entertained productive conversations with a number of key Global Blue customers, both at the executive level and in physical stores," Lauber said.

The company's stock tumbled on Tuesday following the earnings report, which likely stemmed from the processor's overall payment volume coming in slightly lower than expected, Novick said. "People are concerned that the growth trajectory is lower than previously anticipated" by roughly four percentage points, he said.

The company’s payment volume was up 25% in the second quarter compared to the same quarter in 2024, according to the earnings report. That bodes well for the processor’s future, Novick said.

But Novick emphasized that Shift4's payment volume is still up 25% year-over-year, which bodes well for the company's future.

However, the payment processor faces potential headwinds in the event of economic uncertainty. The digital payments firm is known for working with restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues, such as sports stadiums, which rely on discretionary spending, making Shift4 particularly vulnerable to an economic downturn, he said.

Other analysts shared these concerns."Downside risks [to Shift4] include exposure to discretionary spending categories," analysts for Truist Securities wrote in a note to investors Tuesday.

Shift4 reported second-quarter net income of $41.1 million, which dropped about 25% from the $54.5 million in net income the company reported for the same quarter in 2024, according to a quarterly earnings report.

The payment processor reported $966.2 million in total revenue for the quarter, a roughly 17% increase from the $827 million it reported in the year-ago quarter, according to the report.