Capital One’s billionaire cofounder and CEO Rich Fairbank has a long history of asking investors to be patient while his biggest bets pay off. One of the largest to date came in May 2025, when he bought 40-year-old credit card company Discover for $51 billion. Today, that wager is already generating an enviable windfall from a regulatory quirk unlocked by the acquisition.

According to Truist analyst Brian Foran, the revenue gain, annualized, has reached roughly $1 billion. Most of it stems from the Durbin Amendment, a 2010 Dodd-Frank rule that regulates interchange, the fees merchants pay when consumers swipe their cards. The rule caps fees for cards issued by large banks running on Visa and Mastercard’s networks. Discover and other smaller payment networks are exempt, allowing them to charge higher fees.

After acquiring Discover, Capital One quickly shifted its debit-card processing from Mastercard to Discover. That raised average interchange fees paid by merchants........

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