JPMorgan To Combine Middle-Market Tech, Emerging Growth Banking Units

JPMorgan Chase & Co is melding its middle-market technology and emerging growth commercial banking units to better deal with startups that become large companies at a fast pace.

According to a report in Reuters, the tech and disruptive commerce industry group will be headed by James Millar and Alton McDowell. Millar was previously in charge of the middle market banking tech team in New York while McDowell headed the emerging growth group out of Texas.  The two will be focused on startups in the software, semiconductors, food, health and wellness, lifestyle and pet products industries where companies have become successes in short periods of times. The group will hawk services to the companies, offering to handle treasury, payments, credit, financing, mergers, and acquisitions, noted the report.  Melissa Smith, head of specialized industries for JPMorgan’s middle-market group, told Reuters that with startups growing at such a rapid rate, their basic banking needs can quickly get much more complicated.

At the start of the year, The Financial Times reported the bank is gearing up to combine its small business (SMB) and large enterprise payments solutions, with Chase Merchant Services merging into the Corporate and Investment Bank’s Treasury Services.  The combined entity will be called the Wholesale Payments unit. Meanwhile in February, JPMorgan became the first bank to develop its own cryptocurrency called JPM Coin. It was developed to settle transactions with customers from its wholesale payments business. It’s mainly for international and securities transactions pertaining to blockchain. While the bank said it doesn’t have any intention to provide access to the digital token to individuals, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently said the new cryptocurrency could one day be used by consumers. “JPMorgan Coin could be internal, could be commercial, it could one day be consumer,” Dimon said during a question-and-answer session at the bank’s annual investor day in February.