Dive Brief:

• JPMorgan Chase has partnered with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, aimed at making buying crypto easier for the bank’s customers, the companies said Wednesday.
• The initial phase of the partnership gives customers of both companies new capabilities, such as direct bank-to-wallet connection, which enables JPMorgan customers to link their bank accounts to Coinbase wallets using the lender’s application programming interface.
• Chase is also allowing customers to transfer their Chase Ultimate Rewards points directly to Coinbase accounts at a 1:1 redemption ratio – 100 points equal to $1 in value – and use their accumulated rewards points to fund their Coinbase accounts.

Dive Insight:

Starting this fall, customers can also fund their Coinbase accounts using Chase credit cards, according to the press release.

The direct bank-to-wallet and ultimate rewards features will go live next year, the companies said.

“By joining forces with Coinbase, we are enhancing the security and privacy of our customers' data, allowing them to use their money and rewards in new and exciting ways,” Melissa Feldsher, JPMorgan Chase’s head of payments and lending innovation, said in a statement. “Customers can now seamlessly and securely convert their points into cryptocurrencies.”

Coinbase’s partnership with JPMorgan comes almost a week after the crypto exchange announced it has teamed up with PNC to offer crypto-as-a-service. PNC customers soon will be able to buy, sell and hold crypto through Coinbase. 

“Together, we are expanding choice and lowering barriers to entry for consumers to participate in the future of financial services onchain,” Max Branzburg, head of consumer and business products at Coinbase, said in a statement Wednesday.

Emilie Choi, president of Coinbase, noted their partnership with Plaid remains active and that the Chase integration is meant to expand consumer options, not replace the existing ones.

“Our primary partner continues to be @Plaid whose efforts on open banking we deeply support,” Choi wrote on the social media platform X.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon had hinted at the biggest U.S. bank’s plans to get involved in both JPMorgan deposit coin and stablecoins, “to understand it and be good at it,” when the bank reported second-quarter earnings earlier this month.

“I think they’re real, but I don’t know why you’d want a stablecoin as opposed to just a payment,” Dimon noted. Despite his skepticism, Dimon indicated JPMorgan plans to be involved in the space to “be cognizant” and “learning a lot.”

Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar.

The tie-up comes amid escalating tensions between traditional banks and fintechs over consumer data access rights and associated costs. 

JPMorgan has sent notices to data aggregators recently to inform them of new fees for data access, which would be imposed as soon as September. The direct relationship with JPMorgan and fintechs could allow the latter to bypass traditional aggregators like Plaid and MX Technologies.

Crypto billionaire Tyler Winklevoss has publicly opposed the policy and later said JPMorgan paused onboarding his crypto exchange Gemini in retaliation for his criticism, according to Bloomberg. 

In a recent note to Feldsher, a JPMorgan systems employee wrote in an internal memo that aggregators are accessing customer data several times a day, even when the customer is not actively using the app, thereby “massively taxing” the lender’s systems, CNBC reported.

The gap between cryptocurrency and traditional finance is narrowing in 2025, driven by relaxed regulatory oversight and a push for comprehensive federal cryptocurrency legislation, as evidenced by the signing of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act into law by President Donald Trump earlier this month.

Several significant partnerships between traditional banks and crypto companies have emerged recently, such as BNY’s announcement that it will custody reserves for Ripple's new stablecoin, Ripple USD. BNY previously established a similar partnership with Societe Generale for their CoinVertible USD stablecoin.

In April, digital bank Green Dot said it would partner with Crypto.com to offer banking and money management tools to the crypto exchange’s U.S. customers through the bank’s embedded finance platform, Arc.