This content first appeared in the July 2025 Fintech newsletter. If you’d like more commentary and analysis from the a16z Fintech team, subscribe here.
Operation Chokepoint 3.0
Alex Rampell
Under the Biden administration, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 tried to debank and deplatform crypto.
That era has ended, but now the banks are aiming to implement their own Chokepoint 3.0 — charging insanely high fees to access data or move money to crypto and fintech apps — and, more concerningly, blocking crypto and fintech apps they don’t like.
JPMorganChase is an $800 billion company. Make no mistake: this isn’t about a new revenue stream. It’s about strangling competition. And if they get away with this, every bank will follow.
Dodd-Frank Section 1033 guarantees that consumers have rights to their data. It’s the CFPB’s job to enforce this. While the CFPB under the Biden administration made some questionable moves, upholding 1033 preserved consumer choice and competition.
The crazy thing is that sometimes this “data” is just your account number and routing code. That’s right: information that’s printed on the bottom of every check. And yet, if delivered electronically, somehow banks are asserting that it should come with tremendous fees — paid to banks that were collectively bailed out by taxpayers a mere 17 years ago.
If it suddenly costs $10 to move $100 into a Coinbase or Robinhood account, maybe fewer people will do it. Or if it costs $10 to get a cheaper loan from a fintech, maybe you’ll be forced to take a crappier one from JPM. And if JPM and others can block consumers from connecting their own freely chosen crypto and fintech apps to their bank accounts, they effectively eliminate competition.
In a perfect world, consumers would vote with their wallets. But every bank will likely do this, and getting a new banking charter takes years. Many banks have hostages, not customers.
We don’t need a new law; we just need the administration to prevent this callous and manipulative attempt to kill competition and consumer choice.
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Recent M&A Deals and Market Intel
Lloyds Banking Group announced its acquisition of Curve, the digital wallet provider, for around $161 million, on July 21.
Figure recombined its consumer credit marketplace and blockchain-native asset exchange businesses on July 17 in preparation for a potential IPO this fall.
Starling Bank is reportedly exploring the acquisition of a nationally chartered U.S. bank and considering a potential listing on the NYSE as part of its expansion plans.
Revolut entered the Argentine market with the acquisition of lender Cetelem Argentina from BNP Paribas Personal Finance on June 26.
Envestnet announced that it had reached an agreement to sell Yodlee, its open finance and data analytics subsidiary, to private equity firm STG on June 25. The sale follows reports dating back to December 2023 that Envestnet was exploring a sale of the unit. Envestnet originally acquired Yodlee in 2015 for approximately $590 million.
Xero announced its acquisition of Melio for an upfront consideration of $2.5 billion in cash and equity, with an additional earnout of up to $500 million payable over three years. The deal addresses a critical customer need for U.S. customers by integrating accounting and payments into a unified platform. The purchase price implies a trailing twelve-month (TTM) sales multiple of approximately 16x.
Wealthfront confidentially filed for IPO on June 23.
