Marqeta

Marqeta is a card issuing platform supporting debit, credit, prepaid and flexible credentials, used by companies in buy now pay later, on-demand delivery, expense management, retail and digital banking to embed card products inside their own services.

Just-in-time funding is the capability that made this category possible and it is worth understanding properly. Conventional card programmes require money to sit on a card before it can be spent, which for an on-demand delivery business means pre-loading thousands of courier cards with float that mostly does nothing. Just-in-time funding instead approves the money at the moment of authorisation, when the platform already knows the exact order being paid for, so no float is stranded and no card can be spent on anything else.

Dynamic spend controls extend the same idea to policy. Rules applied at authorisation can permit a specific merchant category, a specific amount or a specific window, which turns the card itself into the enforcement mechanism rather than a receipt to be argued about later. That is the whole basis of modern expense management.

Marqeta argues that legacy payment platforms are slow, rigid and lack control, and offers existing relationships with issuing banks, card networks and fulfilment providers so a programme can launch in days rather than months, which for most companies is the genuinely hard part. Open APIs cover new card product creation and supplier or workforce payments, with PCI widgets handling sensitive card data display, virtual card issuance, fraud detection and compliance. Square is a published customer. Rates are not published.