Oakland, California-based fintech Marqeta has had a difficult year. With a 50% downturn in its stock price since the first quarter of 2022 and an ongoing search for a new chief executive, some in the industry have questioned how much longer the payment services company can hang on.
As of the end of October, Marqeta has an answer to such questions. To much fanfare, the company has announced that it will be releasing a brand-new suite of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) products, including 40 APIs that major partners such as Uber can use to access on-demand services such as early pay and instant funding.
“We have a strong vision over the next several decades that we believe customers will come to Marqeta to build these next generation products,” said Jason Gardner, the company’s Co-Founder and recently departed Chief Executive Officer. “We're pretty certain this is where the world is going to move, and we've had a good track record thus far of being able to predict what companies need from financial services infrastructure and helping them along the way.”
BaaS has proven a hot commodity in the fintech world over the past few years, with rival fintechs racing to provide their customers a safe and convenient alternative to services traditionally limited to banks. Some of Marqeta’s users such as Coinbase have already integrated the new services into their platforms, and have reported a variety of benefits.
