Some of the largest banks in the country are reportedly looking at the same idea: if you cannot beat a fee cap, buy your way out of it.
JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and PNC have held early, tentative talks to buy a proprietary debit-card network from Fiserv, according to reports. The talks are preliminary and may not lead to a deal. Some banks that looked at the network have already stepped back, worried about backlash from regulators, merchants and lawmakers.
Fiserv stock spiked as much as 7% on the report and was trading up about 2% at midday. That is a rare green day for a name that has been crushed. Fiserv trades near $53, down about 78% from its 52-week high of $239, with a market value around $28 billion. The stock collapsed through 2025 after growth at its Clover payments unit slowed and the company cut its full-year organic revenue growth outlook to roughly 3.5% to 4% from 10%. Selling a network it already owns would put cash on the table without touching that troubled core, which still runs on $21.2 billion in annual revenue.
Why a Fee Cap Is Worth Billions
The prize is regulatory. The Durbin Amendment, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, caps the interchange fee that banks with more than $10 billion in assets can charge merchants on debit transactions, at roughly 21 cents plus a small percentage. Banks under that size are exempt and can charge far more.
Large banks have lost billions in fee revenue to that cap for more than a decade. Owning the underlying network changes the math. If more debit transactions run over a network a bank controls, the bank can design pricing that sits outside some of those limits while staying inside the letter of the law. That is the entire appeal. A network is not just plumbing. It is a way to reset the economics of every swipe.
The Threat to Visa and Mastercard
The read-through landed fast on the two companies that dominate debit today. Visa is down about 2% to near $350, trimming a market value that still sits around $670 billion. Mastercard, worth about $470 billion, is slightly lower.
The logic is direct. Every debit transaction the banks move onto their own network is a transaction that does not run over Visa or Mastercard rails. Those rails are the foundation of the payment duopoly's pricing power. A serious, bank-owned alternative would not sink either company overnight, but it chips at the moat investors pay a premium for. Visa and Mastercard both trade well above the broader market's earnings multiple precisely because that moat has looked untouchable.
What to Watch From Here
The odds are still against a deal. Early talks collapse often, and this one carries obvious political risk. A group of the largest banks openly engineering around a consumer-protection fee cap is the kind of plan that draws hearings and merchant lawsuits. JPMorgan, worth about $905 billion, and its peers know that.
Watch three things. Whether the talks advance past the exploratory stage or die on regulatory worry. Whether Washington signals it will fight a workaround. And whether Visa and Mastercard keep sliding, because the market is now pricing a small but real chance that the banks stop renting the rails and start owning them.
