Category Archives: Banking

Challenger Banks: What the Sell-Side is Telling Us

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July 2026 — Tom Noyes

Eight months ago I wrote The Neobank Revolution? Not how I see it… after sitting through FinTech NerdCon and listening to the Nubank co-founder and Chime present. My verdict was skeptical: growth is not profitability, the US addressable market is structurally unattractive, and the liabilities of every neobank combined barely register on JPMorgan’s balance sheet.

I was right about some of it. I was wrong about enough of it that this update is warranted and this time I want to ground the analysis in what sell-side analytsts are publishing, not just my own read.

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Fedwire for Fintechs – Opportunities

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I want to break down what the May 19, 2026 Executive Order on financial technology actually means for our industry. If you are looking for a basic textbook explanation of Fedwire or the National Settlement Service (NSS), you will not find it here. See my blog Settlement – Core of Banking for how the plumbing works. Today, I’m on what this EO means for Fintechs, with a discussion on the operational constraints likely to occur.

The day after the President signed the executive order, the Federal Reserve Board dropped a formal proposal to establish a special-purpose “Payment Account”. This is a streamlined, payments-only account category designed to bypass the traditional Master Account bottleneck. Under the new framework, the Fed is promising a 90-day review timeline for Tier 2 and Tier 3 non-bank applicants. 

This sounds like a massive win, but as we look at the fine print, the operational reality is a lot more complicated. Here is my breakdown of the core opportunities, the constraints, and the economic hurdles you need to consider.

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2025: The Great Decoupling

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Year-End Payments Recap

Summary: B2B Stablecoin and The End of the Interface Era

As we close the books on 2025, the payments industry finds itself at  a moment that future historians will likely designate as the end of the “Interface Era” and the dawn of the “Agentic Era.” For the past three decades, the digitization of payments has been defined by the migration of human intent from POS to digital screens. From the first e-commerce transaction to the ubiquity of mobile wallets, the fundamental atomic unit of the economy remained the same: a human being, interacting with a graphical user interface (GUI), making a conscious decision to exchange value for goods or services.

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The Neobank Revolution? Not how I see it… 

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As most of you know I led channels for Citi back in the “direct banking” days. My team in the UK bought Egg (2007) and while I didn’t have oversight of the US I did have the 35 other Geographies. I also ran online and payment services for Wachovia (3rd largest online bank at the time). I’m here at FinTech NerdCon this week and have listened to Nubank co-founder and Chime. While I congratulate their growth and their Nubanks’ progress outside the US, count me as a skeptic of their profitability (and progress) in the US. 

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APIs – More Banks to Follow JPM – Pricing Implications

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As I stated in my Monday blog, Open Banking is dead in the US. Pay by Bank (and open banking) is effectively dead in the US. This follows JPMorgan’s move to push out its new API pricing structure to data aggregators and other third parties in the first week of July. This development comes as the “new” CFPB seeks to vacate its Section 1033 rule.

The latest is that we can expect most other major banks to roll out their own pricing within the next two weeks. These banks will have different pricing, as there was no coordination among banks. JPM has always been the most forward in protecting consumer data. A new pricing floor for data access has been established. Now that other analysts have weighed in, I can recap the pricing framework. 

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Open Baning is Dead in the US

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Last week, I shared the news that JPMorgan has started charging for API access, a move that many see as a death blow to pay-by-bank and open banking in the US. While this might sound dramatic, I believe it’s a necessary reset. The truth is, the current model was never sustainable, and with the CFPB’s recent move to vacate its unlawful 1033 rule, the writing is on the wall. Open banking as we know it is dead in the US.

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Retail Banking and Stablecoins

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Friction, Float, and the Future

As a Banker, Founder and Payment Historian who has spent too long watching icebergs melt, I’ve seen many technologies promise to upend the banking industry. Most have been evolutionary, not revolutionary. But the advent of digital dollars, particularly consumer-facing stablecoins, are unique. Payments are the core of retail banking and profitability. Payments are a networked business, not just in card but in every consortium and association. As I outlined in The Power of Bank Networks, these networks are the engines that drive economies and how banks connect to the environment. For my colleagues in banking and payments, understanding how (or if) stablecoins impact payments is very important.

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Stablecoins: Bank Strategy – Just Another Rail

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Bankers View: Stablecoins, Deposits, and the Future of Payments

Summarizing my 20 odd tweets yesterday. Note that I don’t necessarily agree with the banks’ strategy, but I do understand it. Given that most of the press is focused on how Stablecoins will destroy banking, I thought a banker’s view would be a useful counterbalance.

The buzz around stablecoins continues, often painting a picture of banks demise. As a former banker I thought I’d share my view on the topic and explain the bank strategy (as I see it). While stablecoins present novel tech, the notion that they will supplant established retail banking relationships is a bunch of “hooky”. Big banks aren’t just watching from the sidelines; they are best positioned to integrate this new rail, much like they’ve absorbed countless payment innovations before.

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Capital One’s Acquisition of Discover – Set to Reinvent Retail Banking?

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An Update on the Future of Retail Banking – April 2025 By Thomas Noyes

With the conditional approval from the OCC on April 17, 2025, Capital One’s (COF) acquisition of Discover Financial Services (DFS) marks one of the most transformative events in U.S. retail banking in over a decade. While prior large-bank deals often focused on scale, this one signals a strategic reinvention. Capital One, long admired for its technical prowess, is poised to blur the traditional boundaries between credit, savings, and checking—challenging the conventional “retail bank” construct. This merger represents not just an expansion of balance sheet or customers, but a redefinition of what banking can look like in the age of AI, embedded finance, and consumer control.

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CapOne Buys Discover

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Quick Take

Discover has been looking for a buyer for some time. Back in 2012 they were the launch partner for the Google Plastic card and positioned the opportunity with Google. While Google was interested in the network, there was no interest in taking on banking licenses and credit risk. Finding a buyer for the BUNDLE of Discover was their ongoing problem, with many BigTechs interested in the network only. 

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