The Week in Review

Here are the new and noteworthy stories we have been following this week.

Citi launches the Citi Strata Elite credit card

Citi announced the launch of the Citi Strata Elite credit card, its highest tier premium credit card. The Strata Elite card is the first US card for the Mastercard World Legend brand and offers an array of benefits: 80,000 bonus points, 6X to 12X points on hotels, airlines, and restaurants, $1500 in value, American Airlines lounge access and points transfer, and relationship annual fee discounts for Citi wealth clients. The card carries a $595 annual fee.

Citi joins Chase and Amex in competing for the premium credit card market and the affluent segment… will other top issuers follow suit?

FIS partners with Circle on stablecoins

FIS is partnering with Circle to enable financial institutions the ability to offer their customers the option to make domestic and cross-border stablecoin payments in USDC. FIS’ Money Movement Hub will integrate with Circle making USDC payment functionality available to FIS’ clients – FIS will connect its real-time payments and fraud detection solutions with Circle’s blockchain-native infrastructure to facilitate financial institutions adoption of digital assets.

The signing of the GENIUS Act has ignited tremendous activity and interest within the digital asset and digital currency space as companies rush to bring crypto related payments to banks, credit unions, and their customers… recall Fiserv’s partnership with Circle announced in June.

PayPal enables crypto payments

PayPal has launched ‘Pay with Crypto’ to enable instant crypto to stablecoin or fiat conversion. The service will support transactions across 100+ cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, USDT, XRP, BNB, Solana, USDC, etc.) and wallets such as Coinbase, OKX, Binance, MetaMask, and others. According to a company press release, crypto payment acceptance taps into a global customer base of 650MM+ crypto users and “decreases the cost of transactions by up to 90% when compared to international credit card processing.”

PayPal is aggressively and actively rolling out new features, services, and solutions and working on providing an integrated global platform and offering that connects fiat, crypto, PYUSD, wallets, and networks… this announcement comes of the heels of PayPal World from a week ago.

Chase close to acquiring the Apple credit card program from Goldman Sachs

According to the Wall Street Journal, JPMorgan Chase “is in advanced talks to take over Apple’s credit card program.”  The Apple credit card program has been on the block for about two years as both Apple and Goldman sought to exit the relationship – over the last two years American Express, Synchrony, and Chase have been named as possible buyers of the portfolio – and Visa has reportedly offered Apple $100MM to switch from Mastercard to Visa.  According to industry reports the $20B Apple card portfolio has a significant number of near-prime/sub-prime customers, has suffered from operational issues, and has credit risk challenges.

The Apple card deal would be a nice win for Chase (and potentially Visa if it is successful in switching the brand, but a loss for CoreCard)… expect Chase with its scale and expertise in the credit card business to improve portfolio performance and grow the program profitably.

Visa and Mastercard results

Visa reported Q3, 2025 results and Mastercard reported Q2 2025 results. According to company financials, Visa generated net revenue of $10.2B (up 14%) and net income of $5.3B (up 8%); Mastercard generated net revenue of $8.1B (up 17%) and net income of $3.7B (up 14%). Both companies generated an operating margin of 55%+.

Payments volume indicates healthy growth in spend… Visa, $4.25T (up 7.5%) and Mastercard, $2.63T (up 9%) across 4.85B Visa cards and 3.25B Mastercard cards (number of cards is as of end March 2025).

CFPB to revise open banking rule

In a major turn of events, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) asked the court to stay a lawsuit challenging the open banking rule (1033 rule) implemented by the CFPB’s previous management – the CFPB will now “revise” the rules that it had asked the courts to scrap.  In a court filing, the CFPB said, “In light of recent events in the marketplace, the bureau has now decided to initiate a new rulemaking to reconsider the rule with a view to substantially revising it and providing a robust justification.”  The Bureau further said that it plans to issue an advance notice of proposed rulemaking within three weeks.

The open banking and customer data access issue became highly polarized when Chase said that it would charge for customer data access… fintech companies claimed that it would be overly onerous and stifle innovation and have lobbied intensely leading the CFPB to revisit the subject.

Ramp raises new money

Ramp, a corporate card issuer and business expense management company raised $500MM at a $22.5B valuation. The new series E-2 round was led by ICONIQ supported by existing investors and a host of new investors. In a press release Ramp cited the recent introduction of AI agents and continued business momentum as core drivers of its attraction to the investment community – Ramp works with 40,000 companies and handles $80B in volume across cards and bill payments.

Ramp is one of the new breed of corporate card and expense management companies (along with Brex, Airbase, BILL, SAP Concur) operating in a large commercial payments market that is ripe for automation and where smart AI-based solutions can make significant inroads.

Chase and Coinbase launch strategic partnership

JPMorgan Chase and Coinbase announced a broad strategic partnership that will enable Chase customers to seamlessly interact with Coinbase. Specifically, Chase customers will be able to link their bank account to Coinbase wallets, transfer credit card rewards points to their Coinbase account, and use their credit card to fund their Coinbase account. The bank account-wallet linking and points redemption features will be available in 2026 while the credit card funding feature will be available later this year.

With this partnership Chase becomes the first major bank to bridge the world of traditional finance and cryptocurrency signaling the rapid mainstreaming of the crypto industry.

Euronet to acquire CoreCard

Euronet is acquiring CoreCard in a stock-for-stock deal valued at approximately $248MM. According to a Euronet press release, the “acquisition aims to accelerate Euronet’s digital transformation strategy, expand the company’s U.S. footprint and extend CoreCard’s access to global markets.”  Euronet is expected to integrate CoreCard with its Ren payments platform. Euronet is a US-based payments processor that has a significant international footprint in ATM/POS processing, card processing, and money movement – CoreCard is a credit card issuing platform/provider best known for handling credit card issuer processing for Goldman's Apple card program.

The CoreCard acquisition provides a nice entry point for Euronet in domestic and international credit card issuer processing and potentially reshapes the competitive dynamics for credit card issuer processing in the US.