JPMorgan Chase should absolutely be afraid of fintech

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has observed a new generation of fintech players, led by PayPal, Square, and tech giants around the world, exponentially increasing users and market value.

His message to the management team of his $ 3.4 trillion banking goliath: Be scared.

“Absolutely, we should be afraid of less,” Dimon said Friday on a conference call with analysts. “We have a lot of resources, a lot of very smart people. We just have to get faster, better, faster. … Looking at what we did, you’d say we did a good job, but the others did. also did a good job. “

Dimon’s blunt assessment was in response to questions from analysts, including Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo, who pointed out that with rich and tech-like assessments, fintech players have “beaten” traditional banks these last years.

Dimon said he sent his deputies a list of global competitors and that PayPal, Square, Stripe, Ant Financial as well as US tech giants including Amazon, Apple and Google were names the bank should monitor. Competitors are also clients of JPMorgan’s commercial and investment bank in many cases, he added.

Competition will be particularly stiff in the world of payments, he said: “I expect to see very, very tough and brutal competition in the next 10 years,” Dimon said. “I expect to win, so help me God.”

Dimon added that in some cases the new players were “examples of unfair competition” that the bank would end up doing something about. It has included players who take advantage of the richer income from debit cards for small banks and Dimon companies accused of failing to take precautions against money laundering.

He specifically called out to Plaid, the payments startup whose acquisition by Visa recently collapsed, saying “people who inappropriately use the data given to them, like Plaid.”

Plaid CEO Zach Perret declined to respond directly to the accusation in an interview with CNBC’s David Faber, adding that Plaid was spending time with the bank on a partnership.

– CNBC’s Dawn Giel contributed to the report.