Dive Brief:

• Goldman Sachs is buying General Motors' credit-card business for about $2.5 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources. GM cards hold roughly that same amount in outstanding balances to current issuer Capital One, the Financial Times reported.
• A GM deal, if it holds — the agreement is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks — would more than double the value of Goldman's card portfolio. Goldman held more than $2.3 billion in credit-card loans as of June 30, the Financial Times reported in August.
• Goldman won the deal over Barclays — its second big victory over the British lender in the credit-card space. Apple phased out a rewards-program deal with Barclays ahead of the Apple Card's launch last year. Reports that the two banks were vying for GM's business first surfaced in August.

Dive Insight:

Goldman's partnership with GM dovetails into a goal Goldman CEO David Solomon laid out at the bank's Investor Day in January: to nearly triple its consumer loans and card balances by 2025 — to $20 billion from $7 billion.

Goldman and Capital One, which has issued GM cards since 2012, have agreed on the purchase price and the outline of the deal, sources told the Journal. Goldman is likely to pay a slight premium for the debt and pitch cardholders on banking products, such as Marcus accounts, personal loans and investment products.

Part of Goldman's appeal to GM allegedly was a strategy to use cars as e-commerce portals. GM was the first major car company to allow drivers to order food, pay for gas and book hotel stays from dashboard touch screens — a method of payment that may gain added traction as consumers increasingly move toward contactless sales as the coronavirus pandemic continues.