By making it harder for outside platforms to access data, the big banks keep users locked into their own systems and interfaces.
JPMorgan Chase just announced a new set of fees on financial-technology (fintech) platforms for access to their customers’ bank account information. This move from the banking giant is a direct attack on consumer choice, financial innovation, and the free market.
America’s biggest bank is effectively imposing a tax on consumers. These fees aren’t about protecting customers or improving service; they’re about preserving the bank’s monopoly over your money and your information.
This is the clearest sign yet that Wall Street is terrified of competition from fintech platforms, decentralized finance (DeFi), and crypto. That’s because these sectors are delivering what traditional banks have long resisted: greater consumer choice, better user experiences, lower fees, and more transparency. They’re unlocking new technologies, slashing costs, and giving users greater control over their financial futures.
Apps like Venmo, Acorns, Robinhood, and Chime rely on secure access to banking data to offer direct-to-consumer services. These apps work because they can securely link to a user’s bank account through third-party platforms. When banks like JPMorgan make those connections more expensive or difficult, they’re not just squeezing fintech platforms, they’re cutting off consumers from tools they increasingly rely on and, in essence, forcing you to pay for access to your own banking information.
It’s clear JPMorgan and other major banks are trying to preserve their role as gatekeepers and consolidate control over consumers. It’s anti-competitive, plain and simple.
Worse still, when big banks like JPMorgan consolidate control, they’re able to impose political agendas. We’ve already seen how major financial institutions have embraced ideological causes and weaponized their power to “debank” disfavored individuals and businesses, usually conservative ones. Restricting access to financial data is just another tool to block the rise of independent platforms they can’t control.
These new fees will stifle innovation, suppress competition, and force Americans to depend on institutions that have prioritized politics over people.
At risk are the apps and digital currencies that give Americans the freedom to move their money, manage their budgets, invest in new ways, and protect their data from the very institutions that have spent decades abusing their trust.
That’s why Consumers’ Research is calling out JPMorgan’s tactics for what they are: predatory, monopolistic, and dangerous.
This is not what the future of banking should look like, but rather the past trying to hold on. By making it harder for outside platforms to access data, the big banks keep users locked into their own systems and interfaces. This allows them to charge higher fees, limit transparency, and maintain their control over customer relationships and financial insights.
Consumers’ Research has long warned that consolidation in the financial sector is a danger to both economic freedom and political neutrality. These new fees are another way to prevent disruptive platforms from offering alternatives that embrace consumer choice and remain free of political agendas. JPMorgan’s self-serving actions are bad for consumers and bad for America.
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Will Hild is the Executive Director of Consumers’ Research, the nation’s oldest consumer advocacy organization.
