Dive Brief:

• President Donald Trump’s proposed 10% credit card interest rate cap, if it were put in place, would force JPMorgan Chase to “significantly change and cut back significantly” its credit card business, CFO Jeremy Barnum said Tuesday as the bank reported fourth-quarter earnings. 
• “Our belief is that actions like this will have the exact opposite consequence to what the administration wants, in terms of helping consumers,” Barnum told reporters before the earnings call. “Instead of lowering the price of credit, it will simply reduce the supply of credit, and that will be bad for everyone – consumers, the broader economy, and yes, at the margin, for us also.”
• Barnum didn’t rule out that the banking industry could take legal action if an interest rate cap is imposed. “If you wind up with weakly supported directives to radically change our business that aren't justified, you have to assume that everything's on the table,” the CFO said.

Dive Insight:

After Trump called Friday for a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, beginning Jan. 20, bank trade groups were quick to throw cold water on the idea. 

“It would likely be a significant earnings impact for banks with sizable card portfolios,” JPMorgan Securities analyst Vivek Juneja wrote in a Monday note.

Barnum repeatedly noted the intensely competitive nature of the credit card industry. “It's among the most competitive businesses that we operate in, and that's true for all levels of borrower credit score, from high FICO to low FICO,” he said during the bank’s earnings call Tuesday.

It’s also a sizable business for the biggest U.S. bank, although Barnum declined to quantify it Tuesday. The bank opened 10.4 million new credit card accounts in 2025, and had $214 billion in average card outstanding loans in 2024.

“In a world where price controls make it no longer a good business, that would present a significant challenge,” he said. 

A 10% cap would not simply compress issuer profit margins, with consumers seeing the benefits, Barnum asserted. “The provision of the service will change dramatically,” he said. “Specifically, people will lose access to credit, on a very, very extensive and broad basis.”

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the move would have a greater effect on subprime borrowers than prime. 

“If it happened the way it was described, it would be dramatic,” Dimon said during the earnings call. “If it happens in a way where it's modified quite a bit, it would be less.”   

During the Biden administration, bank trade groups sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when it sought to cap credit card late fees and overdraft fees.  

Barnum repeatedly pointed to a lack of information about Trump’s suggestion. 

“We just don't have that much to work with in terms of what's actually been said and what is known,” Barnum said. “The way we actually respond would have a lot to do with the details.”

Beyond a social media post, Trump said Sunday that credit card issuers would be “in violation of the law” if they don’t comply with his Jan. 20 deadline, Bloomberg reported. Analysts covering big banks noted it’s unclear how such a cap might be implemented, and legislation would have little chance of passage.

Trump on Tuesday also threw his support behind the Credit Card Competition Act, which takes aim at card interchange fees. Bank and credit union trade groups jointly pushed back on that, too. 

Apple Card and Fed comments

Amid the talk of changes in the credit-card sphere, JPMorgan is expanding its foothold there. The bank agreed last week to issue the Apple Card. The move transfers a $20 billion portfolio from Goldman Sachs. JPMorgan set aside $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter for expected losses tied to that transaction. 

Dimon called it an “example of patient and thoughtful deployment of our excess capital into attractive opportunities,” according to the bank’s earnings release. 

“This is an economically compelling transaction for us as a co-brand deal,” Barnum said. It’s a partnership with a firm that’s “a leader in payments innovation and user experience, and it's obviously a very compelling distribution channel for card.” 

The integration is expected to take two years, partly due to the need to rebuild the Apple credit card tech stack within the bank’s infrastructure, Dimon said. He noted Apple’s terms and standards “are actually quite good.” 

“A lot of those things will be built directly into our system, and we could obviously apply some of that customer service stuff in other places,” Dimon said, without elaborating. 

The integration process “is going to make us better, just generally accelerate and challenge our modernization agenda and the user friendliness of everything that we do in the card business,” Barnum said.

Dimon was also asked Tuesday for his thoughts on the Justice Department subpoenas served to the Federal Reserve. 

Dimon said he doesn’t agree with everything the Fed has done but has “enormous respect” for Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

“Everyone we know believes in Fed independence,” Dimon said Tuesday, “and anything that chips away at that is probably not a great idea. And in my view, it will have the reverse consequences – it’ll raise inflation expectations and probably increase rates over time.”