Visa bids $100 million to replace Mastercard as Apple’s new credit card partner

Compaytence Dispatch | April 7, 2025

Apple’s Card Shake-Up: A Signal of What’s to Come in Platform-Powered Payments

While headlines buzzed this week with Visa’s reported $100M bid to win Apple’s card network business, the bigger story isn’t just the bidding war — it’s who’s setting the terms. Spoiler: It’s not the banks.

Apple isn’t just reassigning partners — it’s restructuring the balance of power in the payments ecosystem. As Goldman Sachs looks to offload the Apple Card (after reportedly eating 7% losses on the portfolio), Visa, Mastercard, and even Synchrony are lining up to play th

e next supporting role in Apple’s consumer payments strategy.

But let’s be real: This is Apple’s show.

The traditional issuer-network playbook is being flipped. Instead of banks pushing cards through their retail networks, platform giants like Apple, Amazon, and Shopify are building branded financial ecosystems — and they’re shopping for infrastructure partners, not equals. This puts card networks in a race to prove their value beyond processing — and banks in a difficult spot, especially when portfolios underperform.

The Apple Card saga also raises critical questions for the rest of the market:

• Can tech platforms afford to take losses on financial products to drive ecosystem loyalty? (Yes.)

• Can traditional banks afford to? (Not really.)

• Are low-balance, digitally native cardholders the future? (Increasingly, yes.)

  
  

Our Take at Compaytence: This is a glimpse into the future of B2C finance — where infrastructure is modular, banks are replaceable, and loyalty lives in the ecosystem, not the plastic. It’s also a signal for merchants and fintechs: If you're not building payment touchpoints into your ecosystem, you're playing by someone else's rules.

What To Watch Next:

• Will Apple choose Visa or Mastercard — and what does that mean for tokenization leadership in mobile-first commerce?

• Could Synchrony or Chase absorb the portfolio — and what lessons will they apply from BNPL and other digital-first cards?

• How will Amex pivot, knowing that its full-stack offering might be a disadvantage in an ecosystem led by someone else?

  
  

What This Means for You: If Apple, with all its resources, is finding it hard to make a credit product profitable — what does that say about the economics of consumer finance today?

As platforms take the lead in shaping payment flows, where does that leave traditional issuers, and more importantly, where do you want to sit in that stack?

Let’s explore how this shift affects your positioning — whether you’re building on top of existing rails or trying to rewire them.