Payments News Update – November 7, 2025
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT:
Bloomberg Law – November 4, 2025 (subscription may be required)
Wells Fargo & Co. and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. are trying to force data aggregators and fintechs to use a bank-backed firm that charges fees to access customer data, the latest salvo in a fight between traditional lenders and third-party tech firms over the US open banking system.
Wells Fargo sent a cease and desist letter to one data aggregator warning the company to stop using the bank’s corporate logo and other intellectual property on its website and effectively demanding that it go through Akoya—the bank-backed data provider—rather than linking to Wells Fargo directly, according to multiple people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss business relationships.
Wells Fargo also quietly put pressure on at least one other financial technology company, while PNC has separately pushed to make fintechs connect to data through Akoya, the people said. . . .
Payments Dive – November 3, 2025
With an open banking rule blocked in court – and a new version being crafted at an agency that may shutter – it’s easy to see a bleak fate for U.S. open banking.
But any pessimistic outlook belies an expansion of data sharing already happening between banks and fintechs. That was evidenced in several comments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for its rulemaking on the issue.
The open banking trend, which revolves around consumers being more easily able to share their financial data, has taken hold in other parts of the world, particularly Europe. . . .
Financial Times – November 2, 2025
US regulators are approving bank mergers at the fastest pace in more than three decades under the Trump administration, breaking a long-standing logjam in the fragmented industry.
The average time to complete a deal after its announcement has fallen to four months this year, the shortest since at least 1990, according to S&P Global data. Under the Biden administration the average time for approval peaked at almost seven months.
The quicker approvals are removing what dealmakers saw as a major impediment to consolidation among the country’s more than 4,000 regional banks. . . .
PYMNTS – October 31, 2025
Access to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails has long been coveted by FinTechs and non-traditional financial institutions seeking a direct link into the heart of the U.S. banking system.
A “master account” at one of the twelve regional Reserve Banks allows an institution to hold reserves and settle payments without relying on an intermediary bank. The account is tantamount to a gateway that promises faster settlement and lower costs for firms offering new payments products.
But that gate remains firmly controlled by the Federal Reserve, following the Friday (Oct. 29th) decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which upheld the Fed’s discretion to deny access to Custodia Bank, a Wyoming-chartered digital-asset institution. . . .
Payments Dive – October 31, 2025
Competing national priorities and disparate regulatory regimes have stymied real-time cross-border payments for the time being, according to an executive with The Clearing House.
Moving money instantaneously between countries requires regulatory certainty on both sides of the border and infrastructure in both nations capable of sending and receiving money, TCH’s Rusiru Gunasena, head of business development for service providers, said Tuesday in an interview on the sidelines of the annual Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas.
The Clearing House, a New York-based, bank-owned company, operates the RTP real-time payments network. It conducted an experiment in moving money from a real-time payment network in the United States to a real-time payment network abroad in 2022 and 2023, but the market wasn’t ready for it, he said. . . .
Associated Press – October 30, 2025
President Donald Trump’s decision to stop producing the penny earlier this year is starting to have real implications for the nation’s commerce. Merchants in multiple regions of the country have run out of pennies and are unable to produce exact change. Meanwhile, banks are unable to order fresh pennies and are rationing pennies for their customers.
One convenience store chain, Sheetz, got so desperate for pennies that it briefly ran a promotion offering a free soda to customers who bring in 100 pennies. Another retailer says the lack of pennies will end up costing it millions this year, because of the need to round down to avoid lawsuits.
“It’s a chunk of change,” said Dylan Jeon, senior director of government relations with the National Retail Federation. . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT:
Convenience Store News – October 30, 2025
Credit and debit card swipe fees boosting big bank profits underscore the need for congressional action on merchant processing costs, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC).
Recently, JPMorgan Chase reported that net profits for the third quarter of 2025 were up 11.6% year over year and totaled $14.4 billion on revenue of $46.4 billion. JPMorgan is the nation’s largest bank and the largest U.S. issuer of Visa and Mastercard credit cards by dollar volume.
Meanwhile, No. 2 card issuer Citigroup said net profits were up 18.8% year over year at $3.8 billion on $22.1 billion in revenue. . . .
Digital Transactions Magazine – November 1, 2025
Each year in the fall, as the grass turns brown and the trees shed their leaves, the editors of Digital Transactions start their deliberations over an equally gray and shadowy subject: what’s cramping the style of payments players these days? What obstacles are they confronting, and how? Which ones are pressing harder than the others, and why?
If adversity breeds strength, as the old saying goes, then payments professionals these days may have plenty of opportunity to develop their strategic and tactical biceps. The industry no sooner recovered from all the ill effects of the pandemic than it found itself enmeshed in a slew of other issues, some old and familiar but some others quite surprisingly fresh.
Herewith our annual catalog of the problems we think are most alarming for payments professionals right now, ranked in order of their impact—or potential impact—on the industry. . . .