For payments industry ob-servers, it had been one of the most eagerly awaited decisions since Visa and MasterCard's May 2003 settlement in the Wal-Mart case.
But JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s announcement Tuesday concerning its relationship with the two big card associations did not in the end go very far toward clarifying the future contours of the payments landscape.
In fact, the news trickled out in a morning-long series of an-nouncements and statements disputing and amplifying one another - one from Visa U.S.A., trumpeting its nomination as provider of choice for the world's largest issuer; another from MasterCard International, saying it was unaware that any one association had been awarded such a plum; and another from JPMC itself, saying Visa would indeed be its main payment brand but leaving the door open for MasterCard.
As if that were not enough, the banking company also had something to say Tuesday about American Express Co. - specifically, that it had no intention of doing business with a company that was suing it. In some ways, the outcome was a classic example of the approach to third-party providers that seems to be favored by Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's chief operating officer. It settled an open issue in a way that made clear that the company had wielded its enormous bargaining power while leaving plenty of room for big vendors to continue jockeying for advantage.
For those keeping score, here is the current state of play.
On Tuesday a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase said it would continue to issue most of its debit and credit cards through Visa and convert most of its current MasterCard debit cards to Visa. The company also said it would be keeping its seat on Visa's board.
Visa followed that announcement with a declaration of victory, saying it had been named the company's "preferred payments partner."
But JPMorgan Chase went out of its way Tuesday to indicate that it is not divorcing itself from MasterCard.
It sent out a press release that said it would continue to issue MasterCard-branded cards. That release contained a quote from MasterCard's chief executive, Alan J. Heuer.
And the JPMorgan Chase spokesman, David Chamberlin, would neither confirm nor deny Visa's claim to have secured a partnership agreement.
MasterCard said it still has a shot at a significant portion of J.P. Morgan's business.
"Chase has structured a deal where the 'winner' will be determined by the marketplace," wrote Sharon Gamsin, a MasterCard spokeswoman, in an e-mail. MasterCard will "continue to have equal opportunity to build our business with them."
Mr. Chamberlin did, however, say that JPMorgan Chase had no plans to team up with American Express Co., which last year won the right to compete with Visa and MasterCard for bank card issuers' network business.
He noted that JPMorgan Chase is among the bank members of Visa and MasterCard that Amex has sued along with the associations themselves.
"We do not believe that a partnership with Amex is in our best interest," Mr. Chamberlin said. (A call to Amex was not returned by press time.)
JPMorgan Chase was predominately a MasterCard issuer until last year, when it acquired Bank One Corp., which issued all its debit cards and most of its credit cards with Visa. JPMorgan Chase had been expected to announce a decision about its payment brand preference back in the fall.
Mr. Dimon, Bank One's former CEO and now the president and chief operating officer of JPMorgan Chase, has been trying to reshape the merged company's corporate culture.
He has experience pitting two rivals against each other to come up with a better deal. Though Bank One had long been a First Data Corp. customer for its card processing business, it switched after he came on board to the rival Total System Services Inc. (mostly owned by Synovus Financial Corp.) with an eye to eventually bringing the business in-house.
After announcing in January of last year that it would buy Bank One, JPMorgan Chase - a First Data customer - said it would play the two companies off against each other for its card processing business. A week after the July merger it announced that TSYS had won the business, but it was another three months before they hammered out the details of the contract.
On Tuesday, in a letter to employees, Carl Pascarella, Visa's president and chief executive, wrote, "We are delighted by Chase's decision to enter into a partnership agreement with Visa and issue the majority of the bank's credit, debit, and commercial cards with the Visa brand."
In an interview he called that decision "watershed" for Visa.
"This is just the beginning," Mr. Pascarella said. "With the services that we offer … we are in a position to be very competitive going forward."
JPMorgan Chase, which resigned two seats on MasterCard's board of directors last year, will keep its board representation with Visa, where both William Campbell, the chairman of Chase Card Services, and Charles Scharf, the head of the retail bank, hold seats.
The only MasterCard debit cards that JPMorgan Chase does not plan to convert to Visa are the cobranded Continental cards. Visa cited contractual agreements for the exception. Another JPMorgan Chase spokesman, Thomas Kelly, would not say how many Continental debit cards it had issued.
Mr. Pascarella said, "We've always given folks a fairly long conversion time," he said. "It's not about Visa's numbers; it's the fact that the decision has been made."
JPMorgan Chase is the nation's largest issuer of credit cards, with $134.7 billion of outstanding loans. Out of the 88 million JPMorgan Chase cards with the Visa or MasterCard brands 48.1 million carry a Visa logo and nearly 40 million are MasterCard, according to the the Nilson Report, a Carpinteria, Calif., newsletter.
When Bank One and JPMorgan Chase merged their debit card portfolios last year, Bank One brought 5.63 million Visa debit cards and JPMorgan Chase had 2.43 million, according to the company's second-quarter earnings report.
In a July interview, Mr. Pascarella said Visa had received a majority of Bank One's business in return for pricing breaks and other benefits. Neither Visa nor JPMorgan Chase would disclose any contract terms Tuesday.
JPMorgan Chase's decision followed by nearly three months Washington Mutual Inc.'s announcement that it would convert its 9 million Visa signature debit cards and 1.5 million PIN-only debit cards to the MasterCard brand by yearend.
Securing the Seattle thrift company's debit business was MasterCard's biggest takeaway of a Visa debit customer.
