It’s a ‘fintech plus’: How J.P. Morgan Payments became the bank’s $4.7B growth engine

J.P. Morgan Chase’s identity is defined by its position as the largest US lender and a leader in retail and investment banking. However, the bank’s payments arm might be its next big engine of expansion.

JPM ended Q4 2024 strong, with profits up 50% to $14 billion and revenue rising 10% to $43.74 billion. Its payments unit, processing nearly $10 trillion daily, chipped in $4.7 billion to the overall revenue pile.

I asked Max Neukirchen, global co-head of J.P. Morgan Payments, what factors he believes played a crucial role in driving this outcome within the payments business.

“Our focus on providing complete end-to-end payment and transaction capabilities enables our clients – from treasury and trade to commerce – to grow,” says Neukirchen. 

We examine the strategic moves propelling JPM Payments forward and the critical areas it is targeting to build on its momentum.

BTS: Refining the experience from the inside out

Tracking J.P. Morgan’s Payments business closely, a few key moves emerge as its growth drivers and are likely at the heart of its ongoing maturation:

• Moving to more adaptive systems with tech upgrades
• A stronger AI focus across operations
• A push for embedded finance solutions

1. Tech Upgrades: Recalibrating the backbone

Payments may seem effortless, but making them that way takes major backend tech upgrades and eliminating data silos — something JPM zeroed in on three years ago.

To build a modern infrastructure that underpins the broader institution, JPM acquired payments fintech Renovite Technologies in 2022. Now part of JPM Payments, it replaces legacy systems with a cloud-native system for smoother, faster transactions.

For Umar Farooq, global co-head of J.P. Morgan Payments, the payments division is much more than just another arm of the bank — he sees it as a fintech within J.P. Morgan. But not just any fintech: He calls it “fintech plus,” a model that marries the regulatory expertise and experience of a major bank with the tech-driven mindset of a fintech. 

This combination enables JPM to deliver solutions that span the entire payments lifecycle.

“We have solutions at every step of the payments lifecycle. Our end-to-end solution delivers core treasury and liquidity services, what you may find at traditional banks, and commerce solutions, where fintechs typically focus,” Farooq says.

Take, for instance, JPM Payments’ full-stack omnichannel solution. Launched earlier in 2024, this B2B solution brings all technology and transaction touchpoints under one provider: J.P. Morgan Payments. It aims to simplify the technical side for merchants while ensuring a smoother shopping and checkout experience for buyers, both online and in-store.

The Web3 push – Payments get a blockchain upgrade: While traditional financial products remain, the bank is also carving out its space in the future with Web3-driven programmable payments.

In November 2024, JPM rebranded Onyx, its blockchain-based asset tokenization platform, to Kinexys, and also renamed its JPM Coin to Kinexys Digital Payments to meet the increasing demand for asset tokenization among major financial institutions. 

Since its launch in 2020, Kinexys has processed over $1.5 trillion in notional value, with daily transactions nearly surpassing $2 billion. “We’ve executed some of the largest repo transactions globally on any blockchain,” shares Farooq.

2. The All-In Commitment to AI

Jamie Dimon has been vocal about his AI ambitions. In recent years, he’s championed its integration across JPM, turning it into an integral tool for cost-cutting, fraud detection, transaction monitoring, and even upskilling employees to navigate the bank’s increasingly tech-driven landscape.

Take, for example, the AI-driven payment screening tool the bank launched in 2023. This machine-learning system flags potential fraud in high-value transactions in real-time. AI also plays a key role in how JPM Payments manages its core functions, like liquidity and treasury through real-time cash forecasting.

3. Plugging In: Embracing embedded finance

A few years ago, banks weren’t exactly rushing to embrace embedded finance solutions, much like they were initially hesitant about the cloud. Now, it’s a different ball game altogether. What began as a niche concept has snowballed into a major trend, especially in the payments sector, where speed and smoother transactions are becoming paramount.

Diversifying revenue streams: Banks now recognize that embedded solutions go beyond convenience — they’re also a fresh source of revenue, according to Scott Southall, Citi’s Head of Banking as a Service. “For banks, the opportunity is twofold — serving marketplaces and platforms directly or indirectly through their fintech clients,” he told me in a recent interview.

Lia Cao, Global Head of Embedded Finance & Solutions at J.P. Morgan, shares a similar view. These solutions don’t just streamline operations — they deepen customer engagement and unlock new revenue streams, she noted when we sat down to talk.

Last year, J.P. Morgan Payments expanded its suite of embedded banking solutions, allowing its corporate clients to integrate payment functions directly into their systems, streamlining cash flow and user experience (UX). JPM’s Embedded Banking and Solutions team — still relatively young at four years — spearheads this expansion.

An example of the bank’s embedded banking solutions is JPM Payments’ partnership with SalonCentric, L’Oréal’s B2B marketplace. By embedding JPM’s treasury services into the platform, SalonCentric optimizes its cash flow and payment processing.

“As more marketplaces, platforms, and companies — especially in retail, healthcare, and auto — expand to a marketplace business model, embedded finance can create a singular experience for their own customers,” says Neukirchen.

Competition & collaboration can co-exist: JPM isn’t only vying with Citi and other banks — it’s also going head-to-head with payments heavyweights like Adyen and Stripe, which have long maintained a stronghold in the embedded finance space with their integrations. The bank’s differentiator, however, lies in its self-built global payments infrastructure, backed by internal merchant acquiring, FX services, and direct access to local clearing networks.

There’s no single winner-takes-all approach. As Cao noted, banks and fintechs each bring different strengths to the table. Some solutions will be built in-house, others will come through partnerships, and in some cases, acquisitions will fill the gaps. The bigger picture is about adapting to evolving business and consumer demands, whether through native software development or strategic collaboration.

As clients move toward modular and as-a-service models, JPM is working on its infrastructure to be flexible enough to support varying levels of integration. Whether businesses need API-based access, embedded widgets, or fully hosted solutions, JPM’s approach is to provide the underlying rails — and let clients decide how to build on top of them.

Farooq describes how JPM’s key in-house tools simplify client integrations:

• Payments Developer Portal – Built on AWS, this resource provides developers with documentation, an interactive API sandbox for integration testing without impacting production data, and support tools to simplify JPM’s payment solution integration.
• Payments Partner Network – With third-party integrations spanning multiple industries and use cases, JPM has built a network that allows the bank to integrate diverse payment methods, banking solutions, and trade financing options.

“As traditional fintech services become more commoditized, market consolidation continues and money increasingly digitizes, payment flows and wallet sizes will grow,” notes Farooq.

“We believe the way FIs, merchants, marketplaces, and platforms handle payments is going to continue to evolve,” he adds. 

“Payments should be instant, smart, and invisible — while also reliable and secure.”