Marqeta Says Embedded Finance Will Turn Brands Into Banks

Watch more: Marqeta: Stability Is Key to Thriving Through Market Turbulence
The global economic landscape, shaped by tariffs and geopolitical flashpoints, is redrawing supply chains and exerting pressure on business models across sectors.

This environment is impacting executives in the payments and digital economy. They need to make tough choices regarding technology budgets and hiring, balancing immediate margin protection with long-term strategic ambitions.

It’s a situation that led PYMNTS to ask payments executives about those tough choices as part of the What’s Next in Payments Series titled “Trade Offs.” Marcin Glogowski, senior vice president, managing director of Europe and U.K. CEO at Marqeta, told PYMNTS that while the economic climate presents unique challenges, the underlying principle for businesses remains adaptation.

“All businesses exist, all the time, in environments that produce some form of risks and at various stages of political, geopolitical, economical change,” he said.

The central challenge for FinTech innovators, then, becomes identifying which payment technologies or initiatives are suitable for the marketplace and which are best put on hold, especially when a business proposition carries inherent risk.

For Marqeta, intent on tackling customer problems at scale, Glogowski said beyond looking at the potential of new technology, the company tests and assesses the inherent risks.

The objective is to ensure that any new technology delivers a “secure and stable benefit” to customers, prioritizing the stability of their solutions and platforms, he said.

Before any new payment technology is launched, Marqeta undertakes a comprehensive review. This involves consideration of the value it will add, the specific problems it will solve for customers, and the broader economic and market context in which it will operate.

This vetting process underscores a commitment to responsible innovation, ensuring that technological advancements translate into tangible, reliable advantages for their clients, Glogowski said.

The nuanced regulatory landscape, particularly in Europe and the United Kingdom post-Brexit, further highlights the need for such widespread planning. The practical execution of financial services became “a bit more granular, a bit more difficult” from a licensing and operational perspective, he said.

“We’re ensuring not just that [the offerings] contain value, but they secure and offer a stable benefit to our customers,” he said. “We care a lot about stability of our customers utilizing our solutions and our platform.”

That approach necessitates a constant dialogue with customers as these enterprises launch and manage their own card programs, he said.

The company’s core strategy revolves around “profitable and sustainable growth,” Glogowski said. Financial decisions related to budgets, teams and resources are aligned to accelerate what Marqeta can offer its customers to speed up time to market.

The Need for Speed

In today’s payments ecosystem, speed is not merely an advantage; it is a fundamental requirement for success. Marqeta’s customers, many of whom are pioneering the next generation of financial services, embody this need for rapid execution.

“Our customers need to be fast,” Glogowski said. “This is the business. Speed is foundational to them.”

For Marqeta to remain a “partner of choice” for these innovative companies, it must mirror their speed and responsiveness, he said.

Marqeta’s core offerings are designed to empower this velocity. The company enables businesses to issue and manage their own payment cards, thereby allowing them to create distinctive customer experiences, maintain control over money movement and secure a competitive edge.

“We today enable many of the most innovative scaled FinTech and embedded finance companies globally in U.S., in Europe, such as Block, DoorDash, Uber and Klarna,” Glogowski said.

Last year alone, Marqeta processed nearly $300 billion for its customers.

A trend shaping the future of payments, and one central to Marqeta’s focus, is embedded finance.

“What we are seeing is more companies who are not traditionally in financial services themselves see the value of bringing financial context and financial elements to their existing relationships with their buyers, with their sellers, with consumers, with small and medium enterprises,” Glogowski said.

This trend allows non-financial companies to integrate financial services into their core offerings, enhancing customer relationships and creating new revenue streams.

However, the path to successful embedded finance is not without its challenges. The technology competence required to implement such programs correctly, in compliance with regulatory requirements, represents a substantial undertaking, which is made easier through partnering with Marqeta, he said.

Marqeta’s overarching goals “are to bring quality, to bring resiliency, to bring stability to these programs,” Glogowski said.