By: 2 February 2023

Marqeta believes the acquisition of Power Finance will give it greater access to the $4t+ US credit card market

Marqeta, a card issuer and payments platform, has agreed to buy credit card issuer Power Finance in its first acquisition since being founded in 2010. 

TechCrunch reported Marqeta will pay $223m in cash for the startup. About one-third of the purchase price is payable over a two-year period. An additional $52m will be paid if one undisclosed milestone is met.  

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023. It will add New York, US-based Power Finance’s credit card management programme capabilities to Marqeta’s platform. 

Marqeta believes the acquisition of Power Finance will give it greater access to the $4t+ US credit card market, enabling the California, US-based company to grow processing revenues and improve its competitive positioning when competing for new deals. 

It already works with Uber for its business debit card and Goldman Sachs for its Marcus current accounts. 

Power Finance was founded in 2021 by chief executive officer Randy Fernando and chief financial officer Andrew Dust. 

As part of the acquisition, Fernando will lead product management for the Marqeta credit card platform.  

Fernando commented: “Companies like ours were made possible because of the path Marqeta blazed in modern card issuing, demonstrating the possibilities in payments with flexible and modern payment infrastructure. 

“At Power, we built a full-stack, cloud-native credit card issuance platform, and by becoming a part of Marqeta we have the ability now to bring this innovation to a much larger market at global scale.” 

This news come on the back of Marqeta promoting Simon Khalaf to chief executive officer. Previous CEO and founder Jason Gardner is now executive chairman. 

Alongside Simon’s appointment, ex-Google and Ancestry executive Todd Pollak joined the company as chief revenue officer.  

On his new role, Khalaf commented: “There is tremendous opportunity in front of us to enable the brands we serve with our innovative, flexible platform and grow the ubiquity of digital payments globally.” 

Image: Marqeta  

Josh Poyser
Josh Poyser is an editor at FinTech Intel. He has written about fintech for several years and appeared at FinTech Connect 2023 on the 'Unlocking Success: The Art of Fintech PR' panel.