By Adam Clark

Apple is at the center of a battle among the world's biggest financial-services companies. Banks are already fighting it out to be the tech giant's partner but card networks are also competing for its business.

Visa has offered around $100 million to Apple to unseat Mastercard as the network underpinning the iPhone maker's credit card, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. American Express is also competing to be the card's payment network, the report added.

Apple and Visa didn't immediately respond to requests for comment early on Wednesday.

It's a hefty offer which suggests Visa sees serious potential in the future for the Apple Card, despite its somewhat checkered history. Apple initially launched the credit-card in 2019 in collaboration with Goldman Sachs but that partnership ended in 2023, as the bank retreated from consumer lending. Mastercard remained the payment processor after the collaboration ended.

Since then, Apple has been fielding offers from both credit-card network providers and banks as potential partners. JPMorgan Chase and Synchrony Financial are competing for the issuer role according to the Journal.

The draw of a partnership with Apple for financial companies is fairly clear -- few brands are as trusted by so many users. Apple said early last year that its Apple Card had 12 million users. The Apple credit-card program has roughly $20 billion in balances.

Apple has rolled out a suite of financial services in recent years as it looks for new sources of revenue amid muted growth in smartphone sales. However, they haven't all been successes -- last year it said it was ending its buy now, pay later service, barely more than a year after it entered the buzzy area of consumer finance.

Apple stock pointed 0.6% lower ahead of the open, in line with the broader market move ahead of President Donald Trump's planned announcement on tariffs.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

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April 02, 2025 06:55 ET (10:55 GMT)

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