I’ve also included a second article at bottom, as it’s hard to discern what is really going on here. There seems to be part of it dealing with wire transfers to and from cryptocurrency exchanges, but I think there is another angle. Some of these FinTech services want you to give them your bank login, and they scour your bank data to turn into a data profile to be sold with the promise of helping you increase your credit score and/or find waste among other services. So along those lines, US Banks seem to be looking to charge for sharing the data they collect and turn into data products they sell to select third parties. Consequently, see this video for just how little financial privacy you have today. So read this as megacorps fighting over who gets to profit off you, the product. And some in silicon valley want to replace banks with their tech products replacing traditional banking and credit accounts.
Top fintech and crypto executives urged the Trump administration to block US banks from charging fees for access to customer data, levies that strike at the heart of their business models.
By Bloomberg
Top fintech and crypto executives urged the Trump administration to block US banks from charging fees for access to customer data, levies that strike at the heart of their business models.
Klarna Group Plc, Robinhood Markets Inc. and crypto exchange Gemini were among a long list of companies, investors and lobbying groups that signed a letter sent Wednesday to President Donald Trump, arguing that the proposed fees would “cripple” innovation and “may cause small businesses and financial tools to shut down entirely.”
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has told fintechs and the data aggregators they rely on that the bank’s customer account information will no longer be accessible without a charge. JPMorgan, the biggest US bank, views the data aggregators as freeloaders of sorts who access data without paying and then charge their fintech clients for it. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. is considering charging similar fees.
“We urge you to use the full power of your office and the broader administration to prevent the largest institutions from raising new barriers to financial freedom,” they said in the letter. “We cannot allow the most powerful, entrenched banks to close the door on a more open and modern financial system.”
Rules put in place by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under former President Joe Biden have been at the center of a debate about how best to share and protect customers’ personal financial data. The CFPB under Trump has said it plans to leave the rules in place while it crafts new ones more in line with its policy goals.
Cryptocurrency executives including brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss signed on to the letter, as did the chief executive officers of Kraken and Paradigm and payments firms Adyen NV, PayPal Holdings Inc. and Stripe Inc.
“I think it’s just very transparent – they don’t want competition,” Andreessen Horowitz partner and letter signatory Alex Rampell said in an interview.
The CEOs were joined by trade groups including the Financial Technology Association and the American Fintech Council.
“They’ve seen what the power of open banking and what open finance can do, so they want to ensure that incumbent institutions or incumbent finance aren’t preventing that innovation from occurring,” Penny Lee, CEO of the fintech lobbying group FTA, said in an interview.
JPMorgan wants to choke off crypto by taxing your bank data, says Tyler Winklevoss
By Jai Hamid
In this post:
- Tyler Winklevoss says JPMorgan wants to block free access to bank data to destroy crypto and fintech startups.
- JPMorgan plans to charge fees to third-party apps like Plaid, which could shut out small firms and drive up costs.
- Jamie Dimon defends the fees as necessary for security, but critics say it’s just a move to kill competition.
Tyler Winklevoss says JPMorgan is trying to kill crypto by charging people to access their own bank data. He posted on X accusing the $800 billion bank and other Wall Street players of launching an attack on open banking and the third-party apps that make crypto accessible to millions.
Tyler said they’re targeting companies like Plaid to cut off the link between your fiat account and your crypto wallet; Gemini, Coinbase, Kraken, all of them.
According to Tyler, who co-owns Gemini, JPMorgan and its allies “want to take away your right to access your banking data for free” and replace it with massive fees that would wreck the startups helping people move money into crypto.
That includes third-party aggregators, fintech bridges, and anyone building on top of the open banking rule under Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act. Tyler warned that JPMorgan is actively suing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to kill the Open Banking Rule and shut the door on data access altogether.
Fees could crush small fintechs and block crypto transfers
Last month, JPMorgan told fintechs it plans to charge fees every time they access a customer’s account data. That means any time someone moves money from a JPMorgan Chase account to a crypto exchange like Coinbase or Kraken, the middlemen that provide the tech, like Plaid or MX, will now have to pay up.
They’re expected to pass those charges on to their clients. In some cases, the fees could even hit consumers. Another said the fees would be higher than what their fintech had earned in an entire decade. This would require everyone to raise prices by 1000% to cover the cost. Smaller startups would no longer be able to serve customers who bank with JPMorgan.
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Kraken, said JPMorgan is taking ownership of customer data and treating it like a product. “Once data becomes a revenue stream, the goal is to fragment it, lock it in, and sell it at margin,” Arjun said on X.
Tyler’s post triggered hundreds of responses on X. One user said, “Chase has been relentlessly blocking my wires to Kraken even when I go into a physical branch.” Another said, “Big banks are terrified that you might actually control your own financial data. They’d rather keep you trapped.”
Andy Barr, who said he doesn’t care about crypto, still admitted this hurts fintech. “Open Banking is a basic thing most of the world has adopted or is adopting,” he said. “Not enforcing it would just put us further behind.”
One user argued that giving Plaid or any third party your bank login credentials is a bad idea. “Remember, if it is free, you are the product,” they wrote.
Jamie Dimon wants total control, with no competition
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, made it clear during a 2021 analyst call that he doesn’t like fintechs. He told investors that traditional banks should be “scared sh**less” of startups like Plaid and that competition would be brutal for the next decade. He said he expects to win that fight, and since then, he’s been trying to make sure no one else does.
Jamie wrote in his annual shareholder letter this year that a battle with third-party aggregators was already building. He said JPMorgan is willing to share data, but only if it’s done the way they want. Customers, he said, should authorize everything.
They should also know exactly how their data is being used and when. He claimed that companies like Plaid are exploiting bank data for profit and argued that they should be forced to pay to use JPMorgan’s infrastructure.
During JPMorgan’s earnings call, Jamie added that running APIs and keeping systems secure costs real money. But not everyone buys that logic. Critics believe this is about cutting off competition, not protecting customers. Harshita Rawat, a research analyst at Bernstein, estimated JPMorgan has about 20 million checking accounts.
That’s 20 million people who could soon be blocked from using third-party apps with crypto. The bank has already told Plaid and other aggregators that fees are coming. Nobody knows the exact price tag yet.
PayPal and Block might be fine for now. Analysts think they have already worked out deals with JPMorgan that shield them from these new costs. But others say this view is too optimistic.