Fiserv and Stripe aren't the only companies interested in Georgia's special banking charter. Two more payments players are trying to acquire the state charter, which would give them the right to process payments without a partner bank.
A spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance said Monday that a third company applied for the charter and a fourth payments company has expressed interest in applying, although he said he could not name the companies.
The state agency expects to officially announce the application in the next two months, the spokesperson, Bo Fears, said in a phone interview.
"There still is a great deal of interest in the charter," he said.
Milwaukee-based Fiserv revealed that it applied for the charter in January 2024, while Stripe, which has a dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland, applied in March.
Both companies have received conditional approval, Fears said. The two companies have agreed to take certain actions to get full approval, although their agreements with the state are not public, he said.
The special-purpose banking credential — known as the merchant acquirer limited purpose bank charter, or MALPB — lets a financial institution like a payment processor work directly with credit card networks to settle transactions, potentially cutting banks out of the process.
In such cases, banks will likely still have a role in payment processing, but Fiserv and Stripe will almost certainly use the charter to offer lower payment processing prices than their competitors or reduce their own costs, according to analysts and consultants who follow the payments industry.
"With one of these limited charters, they are the sponsor bank," Cliff Gray, principal at advisory firm Gray Consulting Ventures, said in an email.
Prior to Fiserv, only one company — an Israeli company then known as Credorax — applied for the special banking charter. That company applied in 2012 and later changed its name to Finaro and has since been acquired by digital payments firm Shift4.
The company surrendered the charter a few years after it was granted, Fears said. Finaro was unable to use the special banking charter because credit card networks refused to work with it, according to industry consultants.
However, Fiserv's application "suggests the company’s confidence in also being approved and getting card network membership," Michele Alt, a partner for the financial advisory firm Klaros Group, said in an email.
