Supercharging the margin possibilities by disintermediating the card ecosystems is the primary economic advantage of wallets capable of holding balances. I bolded that for emphasis because non-specialists routinely assume that the thing that looks like a bank deposit, and might actually be a bank deposit under the hood, must earn revenue in the same way that bank deposits earn revenue, via net interest margin. It does and in high-interest environments, like the one we’re currently living in (at least in the U.S.), this is lucrative. Paypal earned nearly $500 million in interest on customer balances last year, per their 2023 annual report. Most of that is very high margin revenue, but it is not the ballgame. The real prize is having vastly better economics on the transactions.