Global card issuing platform Marqeta, which demonstrated its Payment Gateways technology at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, announced today that it has secured $260 million in new funding in a round led by Coatue Management. The capital will be used to further develop the company’s payment card platform and to fuel global expansion, according to company founder and CEO Jason Gardner.
The investment boosts Marqeta’s valuation to “nearly $2 billion” and featured the participation of new investors Vitruvian Partners, Spark Capital, Lone Pine Capital, and Geodesic. The company’s existing investors include Visa, ICONIQ, Goldman Sachs, 83North, Granite Ventures, CommerzVentures, and CreditEase.
In a statement, Gardner positioned Marqeta at the center of a worldwide transformation in card issuance. “When today’s innovators are in need of modern payment solutions, they aren’t turning to banks as their primary issuers any more and want a platform built for their needs,” he said. “We’ve been proud to power this transformation as the most advanced card issuing platform built in over two decades.”
With more than 300 employees around the world, Marqeta leverages its platform and open APIs to enable fintechs to build and offer a wide variety of payment-based solutions for customers. The growth in the company’s business has been connected increasingly to the rise of new technology-savvy companies entering the financial services space who seek to offer payment, lending, and other solutions without relying on traditional banks.
“Marqeta is attacking a multi-trillion dollar opportunity in this market,” Gardner said. “This investment puts us in prime position to round out our product vision, bring Marqeta to new geographies, build even more groundbreaking features for our customers and double down on our already aggressive growth trajectory.”
Founded in 2010, Marqeta is based in Oakland, California. With partners including Square, Affirm, and Kabbage, the company has doubled revenues for the past three years and opened a new office in London last fall to kick off its European expansion. TechCrunch reported that Marqeta is considering an initial public offering within the next year and a half.
Marqeta presented Democratizing Issuer Payment Processing with Just-In-Time (JIT) Funding at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. The discussion, led by Marqeta CTO Tony Ford, introduced the company’s open payment APIs, which democratize issuer payment processing by making e-commerce innovators a part of the authorization stream.