EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Marqeta, a leading commerce and payments platform, today announced $14 million in Series B funding to introduce new platform features and aggressively expand its national footprint this year. The latest round of capital was led by a consortium of investors that included existing investors, Greylock IL (an affiliate fund of Greylock Partners), Granite Ventures, new investor Commerce Ventures, and a number of leading new angel and unnamed strategic investors.
“Since our launch in 2010, Marqeta’s technology has advanced significantly, leading to new national partnerships and successful adoption of our +M Platform,” said Jason Gardner, Founder and CEO of Marqeta. “This new round of funding will help us push further into the payments ecosystem with our network-of-networks approach to merchants, consumers, and enterprise partners.”
Marqeta’s +M Platform is the most advanced technology available to keep and redeem stored value, gift card value, prepaid loyalty value, and additional rewards – from multiple retailers – all on one payment card or mobile app. Through its APIs and full-service platform, Marqeta offers retailers, issuers, program managers, and other large enterprises a turnkey solution for gifting, loyalty, promotions, cash back offers, charitable donations, and more.
Marqeta’s capabilities live at the intersection of a number of large, growing trends in retail and payments, in each case solving what have been significant challenges. In the over $115 billion gift card space, Marqeta has eliminated the problem of anonymity. For years, gift cards have been used by retailers to drive traffic, but typically the consumer relationship ends there. Cards powered by Marqeta are all backed by permission-based consumer registration, enabling retailers to convert stored value spend into a true marketing and engagement engine. In the world of deals, offers, and promos, Marqeta enables a fully closed redemption loop, helping retailers convert one-time acquisition into repeat business and – perhaps more significantly – a link between marketing and transaction data.
Additional use cases include a variety of marketing and rewards programs such as digitized employee rewards, corporate incentive payments, and streamlined school donation campaigns that can sit on one consumer account and payments vehicle. Enterprises and merchants alike manage their accounts via a cloud-based portal.
“Marqeta has assembled a top notch team and is clearly consistent with our investment strategy of finding the next technology leaders in retail, digital marketing, and payments,” commented Arnon Dinur, Partner at Greylock IL.
In 2012, Marqeta launched its own branded prepaid loyalty program in the San Francisco Bay Area, modeled after the successful Starbucks Card program. Instead of receiving points and product rewards, Marqeta merchants simply give consumers more money to spend in grocery, restaurants, dry cleaning and beyond. Marqeta also debuted a universal gifting feature with merchants including Jamba Juice, 1-800 Flowers, and thousands of online and brick and mortar retailers. Also today, in a separate release, it was announced that the Marqeta +M Platform is the engine powering the multi-retailer Facebook Card.
“Marqeta is one of the most impressive businesses in the payments and retail space today. We’re excited to see market adoption of the +M technology continue, and look forward to being part of their success,” said Chris McKay, Managing Director of Granite Ventures.
About Marqeta
Founded in 2010, Marqeta is an online-to-offline commerce and payments platform that empowers large enterprises to better serve their constituents by participating in the payments stream, enables merchants to capture repeat business and greater customer spend, and gives consumers more money for the things they buy everyday. The company is headquartered in Emeryville, Calif. Learn more about Marqeta at www.marqeta.com or by calling 888-462-7738. The +M Platform features and capabilities can be found at www.marqeta.com/plusm.
