Global Processing Services (GPS) CEO Commentary - Following Marqeta IPO

  • Trading Systems , Data
  • 11.06.2021 03:35 pm

While in the past few years there has been considerable investment and disruption in merchant acquiring, with the emergence of winners such as Stripe and Adyen, the role of the technology providers behind the cardholder side of the payments equation – otherwise known as issuer processors – has been largely overlooked, despite enabling many of the most innovative and valuable fintechs today.

However, that is beginning to change. The intrinsic value of issuer processors is increasingly being reflected by the post-M&A valuations of some of the biggest companies in the space, from SoFi’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Galileo and its recent SPAC merger taking its market cap to $16.9 billion, to SaltPay’s acquisition of Tutuka and its subsequent $700 million fundraise now valuing the company at over $1 billion. This is only further highlighted by retail investor interest in US-based Marqeta’s IPO, demonstrating that the year of the issuer processor has now arrived.

While the market opportunity is huge in the US, with issuers processing $6.7 trillion worth of transactions in 2020, our experience is that this opportunity stretches across the globe and could be almost five times that amount, given the rapid shift to digital payments adoption and increasingly cashless societies post-Covid.”

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