Competitor Strategies in Payments and Lending

April 2025

Visa and Mastercard are bridging card and digital wallet networks by forming partnerships, enabling transactions across networks. Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase has risen in global issuer ranking through acquisitions. Western global banks are divesting low-profit personal businesses in emerging markets, creating opportunities for local banks to grow. Furthermore, incumbents need fintech partnerships screened by market research, to drive digital transformation to compete with digital challengers.

EUR 1,375
Request More Information

Delivery

This report comes in PPT.

Key Findings

Visa and Mastercard blurring the boundary between card and digital wallet networks

To drive card transaction shares, Visa and Mastercard have been actively building digital wallet partnerships, enabling card users to transact on wallet networks.

Meanwhile, they have been promoting card issuing capabilities to digital wallet operators, enabling their users to transact on card point-of-sale (POS) terminals. 

JP Morgan Chase climbs in global issuer ranking as Agricultural Bank of China declines

JP Morgan Chase has risen in the global card issuer rankings, strengthening its top position in the US by acquisitions.

Meanwhile, Agricultural Bank of China's ranking has declined due to competition from digital payment platforms like Ant Group's MyBank which cater to small and micro businesses underserved by incumbent banks.

International banks divesting personal businesses in emerging markets with low profits

With declining profit margins in retail banking businesses, international banks including Citibank have been divesting their personal banking business in overseas emerging markets.

This allows those international banks to focus on higher-profit-margin businesses such as wealth banking in key financial centres including Singapore, business and corporate banking.

Digital transformation powered by fintechs

Incumbent payment firms and banks face strong headwinds in existing ways of working and experience challenges in in-house innovations to catch up with digital challengers.

Instead of developing everything in-house, many incumbents including Visa and HSBC have identified key areas of embedded finance partnerships to outsource to fintechs, or acquire them.

Scope
Key findings
Visa and Mastercard gaining market shares from UnionPay
UnionPay drives cross-border usage while Visa and Mastercard grow wallet linkage
High market consolidation limited by licences and bank stakeholders
Global card issuing market led by Chinese banks especially CCB and ICBC
Rise of JP Morgan Chase amid fall of Agricultural Bank of China in global issuer ranking
Thriving of digital banks is leading to less consolidation in the card issuer market
Top priorities in payments and lending in 2025-2029
Three key strategies: Acquire, fintech partnerships, cross-network
Asia Pacific banks acquiring Citi’s consumer banking in emerging markets
Capital One to acquire Discover to beef up card payment
Amex to gain full control of Swisscard to strengthen card issuing in Switzerland
Nationwide obtains Virgin Money for larger shares in cards, lending and deposits in UK
Ant Group purchase of MultiSafepay to build payment aggregation strength in Europe
Visa acquires Pismo in 2024 to build issuer processing and core banking capabilities
Ant Group’s 2C2P driving card payment conversion into QR payment in Southeast Asia
Mastercard Pay Local enables card linkage to digital wallets in Asia Pacific
Recommendations
Deep industry knowledge and extensive M&A and due diligence experience

Payments and Lending

This is the aggregation of Financial Cards and Payments, Mobile Payments, Transactions, and Consumer Lending.

See all of our definitions
Share:

NEW REPORT GUARANTEE

If you purchase a report that is updated in the next 60 days, we will send you the new edition and data extraction Free!