How Big Bank Fees Could Kill Fintech Competition (July 2025 Fintech Newsletter)

Operation Chokepoint 3.0

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.

Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm’s $1 billion Apps practice.

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Lloyds Banking Group announced its acquisition of Curve, the digital wallet provider, for around $161 million, on July 21.

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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.

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