Three is the magic number

Three is a magic number

Marqeta made a series of three back-to-back-to-back announcements in recent weeks. Any one of them would have been memorable, but together they promise to chart the course for Marqeta’s future. They  included:

• Announcing the appointment of a new CEO

• Welcoming a former Googler as Chief Revenue Officer

• Accelerating development of Marqeta’s credit card issuing platform 

New CEO

First came the appointment of Simon Khalaf as Marqeta’s new CEO. Simon isn’t exactly a newbie to Marqeta. He joined the company last June as Chief Product Officer, and since last August, also guided Marqeta’s go-to-market organization. In October, Simon led our largest-ever product expansion – the launch of Marqeta for Banking, a portfolio of banking products that represents and expansion of our modern card issuing platform. 

This isn’t Simon’s first rodeo. He has over 30 years of technology experience as an executive and entrepreneur, combining a relentless focus on innovation with a laser focus on customer service. Prior to joining Marqeta, he played a key role in helping to build four different tech companies. He has been CEO four times in his career, most recently with mobile analytics firm Flurry, which was acquired by Yahoo. He also held senior executive positions at established public companies Twilio, Verizon, Yahoo, and Novell.

True to form, Simon believes Marqeta’s story is inextricable from the brands we serve. 

“Marqeta is the engine and developer-focused platform behind the brands that are revolutionizing the payments industry,” he said. “We empower innovation internally and focus on delivering disruptive products that enable our customers to build solutions that change the way money moves.”

As we announced last August, with Simon’s appointment as CEO, founder Jason Gardner transitioned to the role of Marqeta’s Executive Chairman.

New CRO

The second piece of the story was Marqeta’s new Chief Revenue Officer.  With Simon’s appointment to CEO, Todd Pollak will take the reins of the company’s go-to-market teams. He’ll oversee Marqeta’s revenue strategy, how it positions itself in the industry, serves prospects and supports customers. 

If you’re not familiar with Todd, you are definitely familiar with the A-list tech companies that have been his focus over the past two decades: Google and Ancestry. Todd spent the past four years at Ancestry as Chief Commercial Officer, overseeing the company’s marketing, product strategy and commercialization teams. Before that, he spent 13 years at Google serving as managing director in the financial and retail sectors. 

“Marqeta has an A-list customer base, a product with proven scale and clear product-market fit,” Todd told us. “This is a company with an opportunity to help upend how consumers and businesses globally access their money and make payments.”

First Acquisition

The third piece of blockbuster news was Marqeta’s acquisition of Power Finance, which will greatly enhance our credit card offerings with the integration of Power’s cloud-native credit card program management platform. This is Marqeta’s first acquisition, and it’s expected to close before the end of Q1.

By combining Marqeta’s modern card issuing platform with Power’s platform, we can immediately offer customers the tools needed to create innovative credit products. Power and Marqeta were founded on similar core product principles, with a modern and easily scalable platform built with today’s developer in mind. 

“At Power, we built a full-stack, cloud-native credit card issuance platform, and, by becoming a part of Marqeta, we have the ability now to bring this innovation to a much larger market at global scale,” said Power co-founder Randy Fernando.

A big plus of the acquisition is that Fernando will join Marqeta, leading product management of the company’s credit card platform. He’s a fintech veteran and serial entrepreneur, with experience from a number of prominent fintechs, including Head of Product at Acorns, Founder & CEO at Vault, which was acquired by Acorns, and Head of Product at Azlo.