Uber’s Nahar Tapped To Run Goldman’s Marcus Division

An Uber Technologies executive has been hired away by Goldman Sachs to operate the latter company’s digital banking division, Marcus, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Peeyush Nahar is scheduled to come on board at Goldman at the beginning of June as partner and head of the financial services firm’s consumer business, the newspaper reported, citing an internal document. Nahar will take a spot that was left empty earlier in 2021, when Omer Ismail departed Goldman to operate Walmart’s new FinTech upstart.

During his Uber tenure, Nahar supervised workforces that built out software for insurance, payments and FinTech services. Before then, Nahar worked for nearly a decade and a half at Amazon in different positions.

In his new role at Goldman, Nahar will be responsible for meeting targets that Goldman leaders had set for Marcus pre-pandemic, among other tasks. Those goals include building US$20 billion in loan balances, in addition to garnering more than US$125 billion in deposits by 2024. By comparison, Marcus held approximately US$8 billion in loan balances and deposits of roughly US$100 billion as of the end of March.

From its original offering of high-yield savings accounts as of its 2016 rollout, Marcus has expanded into online investing tools, personal budgeting software, and unsecured installment loans. It will also offer checking accounts in the near future.

The news comes as Goldman Sachs had selected the FinTech Marqeta to power online checking accounts for Marcus. Marqeta stated that Goldman will harness the company’s “modern card issuing platform” to debut online checking accounts for Marcus clients. “Marcus will take advantage of our platform’s open APIs and webhooks, as well as our first-rate developer experience, built to help power future-forward banking experiences,” according to a January blog post.

California-based Marqeta is a card issuing platform that provides infrastructure and tools for developing and running payment offerings. Jason Gardner, who serves as CEO, established the firm in 2010.

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