Payments startup Marqeta secures $150M in fresh funding for its global modern card issuing platform; now valued at $4.3 billion

Marqeta, an Oakland, California-based fintech startup, today announced that it has raised an additional $150 million in new funding from a leading institutional investor, valuing the company at $4.3 billion. The company, which is still unprofitable, plans to use fresh capital infusion to accelerate its product momentum and global growth.

This latest funding comes on the heels of Marqeta’s previously announced $260 million equity financing in May 2019, which was led by Coatue and included participation from Vitruvian Partners and several others. Marqeta is also backed by Visa, Goldman Sachs, 83North, Granite Ventures, and ICONIQ Capital. Marqeta is used by major tech fintech companies including Square, Uber, Affirm, Instacart, and DoorDash.

Founded in 2010 by Jason Gardner, Marqeta provides infrastructure and tools to help companies build and manage payment programs. The company’s platform, built from the ground up with no legacy infrastructure, provides a fully-documented, open API issuer processor platform.

Marqeta currently has over 350 employees and operates globally including the US, UK, EU, and Canada. The company has extensive partnerships with multiple banks and card networks including Visa, Mastercard & Discover. Its solutions are used by innovators in digital banking, lending, e-commerce, on-demand services and more.

“Marqeta continues to move forward from strength to strength in 2020 as our global modern card issuing platform provides essential infrastructure and support to our customers across industries and oceans,” said Jason Gardner, founder and CEO of Marqeta. “We’re building a single global platform to define and power the future of money for the world’s leading innovators. This new capital helps us accelerate our mission to empower builders to bring the most innovative products to market, wherever they are in the world.”

The global modern card issuing market is a multi-trillion dollar industry and is growing steadily. New commerce disruptors, tech giants, and digital banks are now relying on physical, virtual, and tokenized card products for a range of use cases. With market-leading innovations like Just-in-Time Funding and Instant Issuance, Marqeta’s platform has helped to re-architect what is possible for enterprises issuing cards at scale.

Arnon Dinur, Partner at 83North, one of Marqeta’s early backers, said, “83North has a decade long history with Marqeta, and we’ve had the pleasure of watching the company target and disrupt a massive global card issuing market that has been starved of innovation for years. Jason and the team have done an exceptional job scaling their business and platform in the U.S. and expanding its international footprint across Europe and Asia-Pacific. The company has grown into a true force.”

“The transformative possibilities of modern card issuing are more commonplace than ever for the everyday consumer in 2020. Marqeta has a deep commitment to powering the innovators driving these shifts in the market and is well-positioned to support the current surge in demand for digital payments following COVID-19 lockdowns,” added Gardner. “We see Marqeta becoming an indispensable part of the global payments infrastructure, and we’re in a solid position to realize that vision for our company.”