Marqeta Accelerates Reach of Commerce Platform

Commerce and payments platform Marqeta raised $14 million in Series B funding to introduce new platform features and aggressively expand its national footprint this year.

“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 was developed to enable consumers 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 programs, promotions, cash-back offers, charitable donations and more.

According to the Emeryville, Calif.-based vendor, 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. For deals, offers and promos, it enables a fully closed redemption loop to help retailers convert one-time acquisition into repeat business and provide 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.

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 give consumers more money to spend in their locations.

The Marqeta +M Platform was also chosen as the engine powering the multi-retailer Facebook Card.