Marqeta returns to Money 20/20 2019 after Europe boom

By Renata Caine, Head of International Strategy, Marqeta

As Team Marqeta returns to Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam this week, it seems like a good opportunity to reflect on how much progress we’ve made in Marqeta’s global journey in the past 12 months, which began with the opening of our European office in July, 2018.

A lot can, and has, happened in a year. Headlined most obviously, by Marqeta’s recent $260 million series E fundraising round, which valued the company at close to $2 billion. The global footprint of our new investors — Coatue, Spark Capital, Lone Pine Capital, Geodesic and Vitruvian Partners — was a huge endorsement of our international potential. They join existing Marqeta investors Visa, ICONIQ, Goldman Sachs, 83North, Granite Ventures, CommerzVentures and CreditEase, who have all been invaluable in getting us to where we are today.

I joined the company in December, 2017, as Marqeta’s first international-focused hire. Shortly after, Ian Johnson joined as our Head of European Growth. This time last year at the Money20/20 Europe event, we were still very much understanding the market opportunity in Europe for a company like Marqeta. Things have come together quickly, under Ian’s leadership locally, as we announced our European office, based out of London, that has quickly grown into an office of 10 people and counting. Europe is a key part of our global growth equation. Europeans are ahead of the curve globally in adopting new payments technology and digital banking services. According to Marqeta research, Europeans are 2.5 times more likely than someone in the United States to already be using a digital bank.

We have a powerful market proposition in Europe. Our Digital Banking solution helps banks and challenger banks build, test and continuously refine new features in a developer sandbox, allowing them to quickly build and launch unique solutions that integrate with existing systems and software. It supports instantly issued virtual cards and offers advanced spend controls to engage users and grow card use. Our platform and feature-rich APIs are highly configurable and scalable, and allow our partners to access actionable, real-time transaction data to drive program improvements. Our custom FraudStream capabilities set us apart inmarket, allowing for real-time fraud scoring and decisioning technology. Our tech stack is built in house and isn’t reliant on 3rd parties. We are certified with Visa and MasterCard.

These solutions are already being deployed by digital banks like Morning Bank and YAPEAL, point of sale lender Aplazame, mobile payments provider Twisto and small business lender Capital on Tap, with many more set to join soon.

In our time in the market in Europe, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm for our innovation and real demand for a truly modern payments platform. There’s a massive opportunity across Europe, helping modern innovators develop, launch and scale payment programs quickly in a rapidly evolving payments landscape, putting them at the center of the process and building out payments solutions they previously didn’t see as possible.

Globally, Marqeta expects to double its revenue for a fourth straight year in 2019 and we’ve seen a dramatic increase in spending activity on our platform in that same time. Since our founding in 2010, we’ve become the standout global leader in modern card issuing, helping the world’s top innovators easily issue highly configurable card programs, as well as authorize transactions and manage payment operations.

This is a giant international opportunity we’re chasing. By 2030, we expect the modern card issuing market to grow to $80 trillion. For this potential to become a reality, new innovators in-market are going to need a truly modern and flexible card issuing solution that can support the full ecosystem of companies living on the cutting edge of technology and finance today.

Judging by the progress we’ve made in these last 12 months, I’d say we’re well on our way. We are eager to help accelerate innovation for our customers in Europe, enabling the frictionless payment solutions we’ve come to love.