When it comes to credit-card spending in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase is already number one. Evidently, that isn’t enough for the banking giant. Not only was Chase the top credit-card issuer in the U.S. by purchase volume in 2024, according to industry tracker the Nilson Report, it is still growing quickly. The bank’s year-over-year credit-card sales volume growth, excluding corporate cards, of over 7% in the second quarter of 2025 topped the roughly 6% U.S. credit-card purchase volume growth across Visa and Mastercard according to company reports. It is growing quickly in lending: The bank’s average outstanding card balances rose about 9% from a year earlier in the second quarter. During its May investor day presentation, the bank said it aimed to take its overall share of outstanding card loans to 20% from about 17%. There are many drivers of all this growth, ranging from Chase’s broad portfolio of card products to its vast branch network. What may be most notable, though, is how heavily it continues to invest in the business. Some of that investment comes in the form of acquisitions, like the travel- and dining-related businesses it has bought in recent years to bolster its offering to rewards-card spenders and capture more of its customers’ spending end-to-end. Those included restaurant review service The Infatuation and luxury travel shop Frosch International Travel. The bank has also been in talks to take over Apple’s credit-card program, The Wall Street Journal has reported. But there are also ongoing investments, such as what it spends to attract new customers, like in the form of sign-up bonuses, and the benefits and value proposition it offers existing ones. In perhaps the most high-profile example, Chase recently refreshed its Sapphire Reserve card and launched the Sapphire brand into small-business cards. The bank overall added about 10 million new card accounts a year from 2022 to 2024. The bank has also maintained a fairly steady revenue rate for cards, even as the scale of the business has grown rapidly. A key measure for the bank’s card business is the net revenue rate. This includes the net interest earned on card loans, as well as fees and other forms of revenue collected via card spending. It takes out certain costs, including rewards and most of what it costs to acquire a new card customer. That rate was 10.22% of average loan balances in the first half of this year and just over 10% for full-year 2024. It was about 10.5% back in full-year 2019. Plus, whenever a card-lending business grows, it is almost by definition a fairly expensive form of growth. Accounting rules require banks to book what could be the lifetime loss on a new loan right away. In addition, other acquisition costs of a customer can also be booked in the first year. Meanwhile, the lifetime revenue—from interest collected and fees generated by the card—comes in over time. However, these metrics don’t give a full measure of profitability. Chase’s huge technology and infrastructure platform can lend the business a high degree of operating efficiency. Also, there is a lot of positive spillover to other parts of the bank. Card users can bring deposits or also get a mortgage. And because of that front-loading of credit costs, the future years of a new cardmember can be relatively more profitable. The bank said at its investor day that the lifetime value per new card account in 2024 has risen about 40% versus 2019. It also said that the return on card accounts acquired from 2022 to 2024 was approximately twice the investment in acquiring those accounts, versus over 1.5 times for 2019 and 2021.
More broadly, the dynamic in credit cards demonstrates what makes Chase such a highly valued company. For one, the market has a high degree of trust in how JPMorgan Chase spends its money. Unlike many lenders, it can afford to be patient with the profitability of investments. The company’s return on tangible common equity was 21% in the second quarter, well above its “through the cycle” target of 17%. That second-quarter figure was also the highest among the big-six U.S. global megabanks. “They’re in a virtuous cycle with investments that might have been a drag over the last five years but are now hitting their profitability zone,” said Truist Securities analyst John McDonald. “A lot of other banks don’t really have a hall pass from investors to get on that track.” Overall revenue from card services and auto lending at JPMorgan Chase was up 15% in the second quarter, to $6.9 billion. Achieving that kind of growth is, to many investors, probably a better use of capital than buying back shares at the current price, which is about 2.4 times book value, according to FactSet data. The arms race in credit cards may be ever intensifying. JPMorgan has plenty of fuel to keep up the pace.