What banks are saying about payments: 2Q25 earnings | PaymentsSource

As talk of tariffs resurfaced ahead of second-quarter earnings last week, bankers and investors have been watching for signs of consumer weakness and slowed spending. 

Those fears haven’t yet materialized, even in light of the Federal Reserve’s warning that tariffs were beginning to push up prices. Bank earnings have been largely positive. Spending grew across both debit and credit cards. And payment divisions at some of the country’s largest banks saw increases in revenue. 

Investors were broadly optimistic about the payments space heading into Q2 earnings, despite that “background tariff noise,” Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Sanjay Sakhrani said in a July 12 research note. 

“Overall investor interest in the space appears tempered, signaling potential for valuation upside if companies can deliver steady results with a clear path to sustained momentum through 2H,” Sakhrani said. 

Here’s what banks have been saying about payments in the first week of the second-quarter earnings season. 

Read more about earnings. (Corporate Earnings News | American Banker)

Debit, credit spending growth accelerates

Credit card spending volume grew at a modest pace in the second quarter, according to a KBW research note. Wells Fargo logged an 8.2% year-over-year increase in credit card volumes, while JPMorganChase tallied a 7.4% increase in volumes. Citi’s volumes notched up 2.7% and U.S. Bank ticked up 2.6%, including its corporate card volumes. Bank of America brought up the rear with a 1.6% increase. 

Credit card volume increases in the second quarter largely outpaced credit card volume gains in the Q1 2025, with the exception of Wells. The San Francisco-based bank logged an 8.7% increase in Q1, compared with its 8.2% increase in Q2. 

Similar trends played out when debit card volumes were added to the mix: U.S. Bank saw a 3% increase; Bank of America volume rose 4.5%; Wells Fargo was up 5.2%; and JPMorganChase jumped 7.4%.  

JPMorganChase, Citi post payment revenue gains

JPMorgan Payments, the payments division of the $4.3 trillion bank, reported its highest revenue quarter to date in Q2, according to the bank. 

Revenue grew 4% year over year to $4.7 billion in Q2. Excluding the impact of equity investments, revenue increased 3%, driven by higher deposit balances. 

The launch of JPMorgan Payments’ deposit token JPMD, its expanded partnership with SAP’s enterprise resource planning systems and its focus on client experiences were responsible for driving growth during the quarter, JPMorgan Payments Global Co-head Umar Farooq told American Banker in an email.  

Citigroup’s Services business — which houses its payments division — also posted revenue gains. 

Revenue increased 8% from the prior-year period to $5.1 billion, according to the bank’s earnings report. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser described the high-return business as the bank’s “crown jewel” in a prepared statement in its earnings release. 

Cross-border transaction values grew 9% to $101 billion, while U.S. dollar clearing volume — the number of U.S. dollar clearing payment instructions processed by Citi on behalf of U.S. and foreign companies and financial institutions — increased 6% to 44 million payments. Commercial card spending volume was flat at $18 billion.  

Comerica, Fifth Third invest in payments tech

Cincinnati-based Fifth Third has been making big investments in its embedded payments platform Newline, and they paid off in the second quarter, President and CEO Timothy Spence said. 

Spence credited the investments with driving 30% year-over-year increases in revenue growth for Newline, and a gain of more than $1 billion of commercial deposits associated with Newline services. Those deposits amounted to $3.7 billion in the second quarter. 

The embedded payments division also onboarded a new client: Rippling — a San Francisco-based workforce management platform that provides HR, IT and financing to small- and medium-size businesses, which selected Newline as its payments infrastructure provider. 

“We continue to win more business from existing clients and to see transaction migration from legacy ACH to modern instant payments rails,” Spence said during a call with investors.  

It wasn’t all roses for the regional bank, though. Commercial payment fees, which account for 21% of the bank’s fee revenue, fell by $2 million to $152 million on lower commercial card spending activity. 

Comerica Bank also touted investments in payments during Q2, including a on-behalf-of payment solution that runs on The Clearing House’s real-time payments network, and a deposit sweep solution that leverages real-time rails.