“Can a legacy universal bank retain corporate and consumer primary-bank status by owning the full stack — deposits, cards, acquiring, treasury APIs, wealth, and cross-border rails — rather than partnering with fintechs?”
Founded 1904 in San Francisco as Bank of Italy, rebranded Bank of America in 1930 and became the largest US commercial bank by branch count. The modern Bank of America Corporation was formed via the 1998 NationsBank merger, then materially expanded into wealth management with the 2009 Merrill Lynch acquisition. Today it operates a full-stack universal bank with in-house payments acquiring (Bank of America Gateway), CashPro treasury APIs, cards issued directly by BofA N.A., and open-banking data sharing via Plaid.