Summary: Marqeta offers card issuing services for SMB lending and working capital products, enabling fintechs like Mondu to build flexible credit solutions for small businesses. Through its platform, Marqeta provides real-time authorization, fraud decisioning, and processing infrastructure that supports programs like the MonduCard; a B2B card offering up to 45-day payment terms for SMBs and sole traders. Marqeta serves as the issuer-processor, while program managers like Mondu control credit decisioning, cardholder experience, and risk assessment.
A conversation with Axel Neumann, Mondu, and Richard Drury, Marqeta
When Mondu brought the MonduCard live with IKEA for Business in Italy earlier this year, it demonstrated what is possible when a modern B2B payments platform, an international card program provider, and one of the world's most recognized retail brands align around a single, underserved need: giving European business buyers the payment flexibility they have long lacked.
We sat down with Axel Neumann, Chief Strategy Officer at Mondu and Richard Drury, GTM leader at Marqeta, to talk about what that milestone means, what the research tells us about SMB credit behavior, and where the opportunity goes from here.
Let's start with the IKEA partnership. What does it represent for Mondu?
Axel, Mondu: It represents the maturing of B2B card infrastructure in Europe. IKEA for Business has a huge SMB customer base; hospitality operators, construction firms, office buyers; and these businesses have always needed better terms at the point of purchase. A 30-day invoice cycle does not solve the problem when you need to fit out a hotel room today and get paid for the project in 90 days. The MonduCard gives those buyers up to 45 days to pay, so a big equipment or furnishing order doesn't have to hit their cash flow all at once. That is a meaningful shift for our customers.
How the MonduCard program works:
- Program manager: Mondu (holds EMI license from Dutch Central Bank, controls credit decisioning and cardholder experience)
- Issuer-processor: Marqeta (provides card issuing platform, real-time processing, and authorization infrastructure)
- Card network: Visa
- Target users: SMBs and sole traders needing working capital flexibility
Richard, Marqeta: That is exactly the model we want to enable in Europe. Mondu is a great example of a company that understood what they needed from a financial infrastructure partner; speed, flexibility, real-time decisioning. They built a product on top of it that genuinely fits the customer. The MonduCard is not a generic commercial card. It is purpose-built for SMBs who are often turned away by traditional banks, and the IKEA partnership puts it in front of exactly the right audience.
Marqeta recently published research on SMB credit behavior. What did you find that surprised you?
Richard, Marqeta: The research surveyed SMBs in the US and UK and found that among the US SMBs actively using expense management tools (around 30% of the sample) the appetite for flexible credit is striking:
- 93% want repayment terms that adjust to their cash flow
- 84% want flexible repayment terms more broadly
- 82% want a single consolidated platform for their credit products (but very few have one today)
That gap between what SMBs want and what they have is the market opportunity. These are not unsophisticated buyers. They understand what they need. They just cannot find it in the products that banks and card issuers have historically offered them.
Axel, Mondu: Those numbers resonate strongly with what we see across Europe. The specific products differ, whether SEPA, invoice terms, installment plans, or digital trade accounts, but the underlying desire is the same. SMBs want to buy on terms that reflect how their businesses actually work, not on terms set by a lender who has never looked at their cash conversion cycle. And when you give them that, they use it. We see higher basket sizes, higher conversion, stronger retention.
The research also points to a gap in credit product sophistication. Can you talk about what that means in practice?
Richard: Among the more advanced SMB credit users in our study, 45% said they had already graduated to more sophisticated credit products over time. But 53% had used a personal credit card for business expenses in the last 30 days. A population of business owners is credit-active and credit-willing, but falling back on personal products because the right business product does not exist, or they do not know it does. That is both a risk for them and a missed opportunity for the market.
Axel: The personal-card behavior is something we see in Europe too, especially among freelancers and sole traders. They are not opposed to business credit. They just need something that fits. The MonduCard was specifically designed for that population; SMBs and sole proprietors who want purchasing power and payment flexibility without the complexity of a traditional corporate card.
What does the Marqeta infrastructure enable for a program like MonduCard that a traditional card setup would not?
Richard: Real-time fraud decisioning is the obvious one. Mondu has its own proprietary credit and risk assessment, and Marqeta's platform supports that with real-time authorization decisioning at the card level. That matters enormously in B2B, where transaction values are high and the cost of a bad decision is significant in both directions. You do not want to decline a legitimate business buyer, but you also cannot afford the fraud exposure.
Key capabilities Marqeta provides for SMB lending card programs:
- Real-time authorization and fraud decisioning
- Flexible program control (program manager sets terms, controls, cardholder experience)
- Processing infrastructure across multiple European markets
- Support for both full program-managed solutions and processing-only arrangements
Beyond that, it is about control. Mondu owns the program, and they set the terms, the controls, and the cardholder experience. We give them the rails and the infrastructure. That means they can move fast, iterate, and respond to what their customers actually need. That is harder to do when you are embedded in a traditional bank's issuing program.
Axel: Speed and flexibility are critical for us. We want to expand our programs across multiple European markets, and the ability to do that with consistent, reliable infrastructure is not trivial. We hold our own EMI license from the Dutch Central Bank, which lets us operate across the EEA, but we still need a card processing partner who can match our pace. Marqeta does that.
Where is the European market headed, and what role do you each see the other playing in that growth?
Axel: The European B2B payments market is at an inflection point. Digital B2B commerce is growing fast (projections suggest the European B2B e-commerce market could reach over a trillion euros in value within a few years) and the expectations of business buyers are shifting. They are used to seamless consumer checkout experiences, and they want the same thing when they are buying for their business. The companies that can deliver that, at scale, across markets, will win significant market share.
For Mondu, the card is one part of a broader suite. We offer invoice terms, installment, digital trade accounts, A2A instant payments, and supplier payment deferral through MonduFlex. The MonduCard extends that proposition to work wherever Visa is accepted, including with suppliers who have never heard of Mondu. That makes it genuinely useful for daily business spending, not just large-ticket purchases.
Richard: The opportunity for Marqeta is in supporting fintechs like Mondu to build at scale without having to solve the infrastructure problem themselves. Europe is a complex market with multiple regulatory regimes, currency considerations, and varying SMB behaviors by country. Our role is to make the infrastructure layer simple so that our customers can focus on the product layer. Mondu has built something that clearly resonates with SMBs. Our job is to make sure the card program never becomes the bottleneck.
We see significant potential in European growth, both through full program-managed solutions for partners who want end-to-end support, and through processing solutions for programs like MonduCard. That breadth matters, as different customers are at different stages of maturity, and we want to be useful across that spectrum.
Final question: what does success look like in 12 months?
Axel: Expansion. The IKEA Italy launch proved the model. The MonduCard belongs in the hands of SMBs across Europe; in more markets, through more enterprise partnerships, and increasingly direct to SMBs and sole traders who need better working capital tools. Marqeta is central to making that happen at the pace we want to move.
Richard: I'd love to see Mondu become the reference case for what B2B card programs can look like in Europe. They are already building something different. Twelve months from now, I want that to be recognized widely, and I want the infrastructure we provide to have been invisible; reliable, fast, and completely out of the way.
Marqeta is not a bank, lender, or money transmitter. Marqeta provides a technology platform that enables its customers to build products using services offered by its bank partners and other licensed providers.
Axel Neumann is Chief Strategy Officer at Mondu. Marqeta's State of Credit report 2026 surveyed 5,000 consumers and SMBs across the US and UK. SMB expense management segment statistics are drawn from the US sample (152 expense management users).
