Marqeta’s Total Processing Volumes Surge 60% as More Card Issuance Goes From Plastic to Digital

A bit more than five months after it went public, Marqeta’s latest quarterly results spotlight the continued momentum where card issuance continues to make the leap from plastic to digital.

In its most recent earnings report on Wednesday (Nov. 10), Marqeta said that its total processing volumes gained 60% year over year in the third quarter, buoyed by growth in digital banking and buy now, pay later (BNPL) to $27.6 billion, according to supplemental materials.

Those volume gains helped revenues jump 56% year over year to $132 million. The company’s financials show that platform services revenue — a figure that includes interchange and processing fees — rose 55% to $126.4 million.

In remarks during the conference call, CEO Jason Gardner gave a nod to a range of payment functionalities.

“Similar to how we’ve seen our just-in-time, or JIT, funding technology enable on-demand delivery and buy now, pay later services, we’re now seeing JIT play a key role in enabling a new wave of innovative cryptocurrency card products,” Gardner said.

Gardner also said that that JIT, used with open application programming interfaces (APIs), allows customers to spend fiat from a crypto wallet at the point of sale.

Management noted that card issuance represents a $30 trillion market globally, and Gardner also said that credit represents a significant offering for the company, as 52% of card spend happens across credit in the U.S.

“This is a massive market opportunity that is underserved by current technology, which has done little to modernize the credit card experience,” Gardner said.

Marqeta’s Chief Financial Officer, Tripp Faix, said that net interchange fees increased 51% to $101 million. He also noted that Marqeta’s “non-Top Five customers grew 226% from a volume perspective in Q3 of 2021 as compared to Q3 of 2020.”

The continued growth underscores Gardner’s comments in a June interview with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, just after Marqeta’s initial public offering (IPO). Previously, card issuance “was like an assembly line,” Gardner said then, “and it was the same card that everyone else had.”

He continued that platforms and APIs are giving engineers and developers, along with technical product managers, the opportunity to create increasingly customizable, differentiated card products.

“This allows [issuers and their development teams] to solve real business use cases versus before, when you would be handed a card … and you just had to figure out how to shoehorn it into your business,” Gardner said.

Read More: Marqeta’s CEO: From Digital Card Issuance (At Scale) To IPO … And What’s Next