Marqeta, the creator of an advanced payments infrastructure and open-API platform defining a new standard for modern card issuing, announced today it has signed its first four European customers: digital banks Morning and YAPEAL, as well as  point-of-sale lender Aplazame and mobile payments platform Auka -- following its launch in-market in October of last year. 

These first four customers represent a strong endorsement of Marqeta’s appeal across Europe amid a growing digital banking landscape, representing fintech innovators from France (Morning), Scandinavia (Auka), Spain (Aplazame) and Switzerland (YAPEAL). They also show the broad use cases of Marqeta technology and the many applications for modern card issuing globally, with this first crop of customers working across digital banking, mobile payments and point-of-sale financing.  

Marqeta’s global vision and European expansion  

“We see the UK and Europe as a key market as we continue to expand our global footprint and the first step in a much larger international expansion,” said Ian Johnson, Head of European Growth at Marqeta. “It has a thriving ecosystem of digital banks and fintech startups that have already had a lot of success in market. To be able to bring on customers of this caliber is true validation of the global possibilities around modern card issuing and of our early work in the market.”  

Founded in Oakland, California in 2010, the Marqeta platform is used by the world’s leading innovators to drive new modes of commerce through modern card issuing -- helping them easily issue highly configurable physical, virtual or tokenized payment cards. Marqeta sees modern card issuing as a $40 trillion addressable opportunity, with Europe ahead of the curve globally in adopting new payments technology and digital banking services. According to Marqeta research, Europeans are 2.5 times more likely than someone in the United States to already be using a digital bank.  

What Marqeta’s European customers think about this new partnership

“Auka has worked with cards since we first started in mobile payments in 2010. We are now expanding our platform capabilities with cutting edge card issuing and processing in partnership with Marqeta,” said Daniel Döderlein, Auka founder and CEO. “Our platform is cloud native, API-based, globally consistent and scalable, PCI and FSA compliant as well as being interoperable with most legacy systems. Marqeta will be a strategic partner for powering these capabilities, but will also enable financial institutions who use Auka to create and run their own issuing products through us.”  

“As we prepare YAPEAL for its launch in-market in mid-2019, we’ve taken an API-based, cloud native and technical focus to building a modern private account and card payment product. Marqeta fits perfectly in to this strategy and mindset and keeps us legacy free,” says Daniel Capraro, YAPEAL co-founder and CPO. “With the lean processing powers of Marqeta, our product development will profit and we can be as agile as possible. We strongly believe in the modern core of Marqeta technology and that it will empower many of our future plans.”

“Morning is currently issuing cards for our mobile banking application Morning Pay,” said Frédéric Senan, CEO of Morning. “Partnering with Marqeta would enable us to strengthen our real-time core banking platform in order to keep on providing cutting edge services for our B2C customers and for our B2B clients as well.”