The payments group is applying to open an FDIC-insured “industrial bank” in Utah — a niche charter that could make small-business lending cheaper, savings stickier, and the payments plumbing more direct. It also reopens an old question Washington never fully settled: how far should big platforms be allowed to step into insured banking?
On December 15, 2025, PayPal quietly did something that tends to make regulators, bankers, and lobbyists sit up straighter than customers do: it filed to create “PayPal Bank,” a Utah-chartered industrial loan company (ILC), with an application to the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC.
