Payment giant Marqeta, an Oakland, California-based firm that assists businesses to issue debit and credit cards to employees or contract workers, has filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public.
Last May, Marqeta raised $ 150 million, giving it a $ 4.3billion valuation, with backers later revealed as Coatue, Vitruvian Partners, and several others. Its existing investors include Visa, Goldman Sachs, and 83North. The filing was widely expected. Marqeta’s customers including Instacart, DoorDash, and Square. The IPO could value Marqeta at about $ 10 billion.
The pandemic-fueled online shopping boom has helped the company more than double its 2020 revenue to $ 290.3 million, up from $143.3 million a year earlier. Marqeta reported an even more robust first-quarter revenue growth, which jumped 123 percent to $ 108 million, compared to $ 48.4 million in Q1 2020.
In its S-1 statement used for SEC filing, the company, as part of their business metrics, has mentioned $ 350 million in annualized net revenue based on fourth-quarter 2020 data; more than 100 percent year-over-year growth in net revenue for 2020; and more than 320 million cards issued to date. According to the filing, Marqueta does business in 36 countries.
Top stock in the secondary market
Marqeta is one of the most coveted private stocks on the secondary market, where it trades between $33 and $35 per share, CNBC reported. At that price and based on shares offered, Marqeta’s valuation is about $16 billion to $17 billion, well above its last private valuation of a reported $4.3 billion.
Explaining its business proposition in the S-1, Marqeta has mentioned that, “As a technology-centric organization with novel business models and needs, such as Uber and Expensify, have gained popularity over the last decade, the inherent constraints of legacy issuing technology needed a new approach. Developers, technical product managers, and visionary entrepreneurs desire the tools and infrastructure necessary to build their products to serve customers around the world.”
“They require open, configurable and well-documented, application programming interfaces (APIs) to embed advanced payment technologies natively into their platforms to programmatically authorize and direct these payment flows without needing to integrate directly with issuing banks and card networks. Open APIs have spurred innovation in previously entrenched industries,” the statement read.
Jason Gardner, Marqeta’s founder, and CEO has earlier said, “We’re building a single global platform to define and power the future of money for the world’s leading innovators. This new capital helps us accelerate our mission to empower builders to bring the most innovative products to market, wherever they are in the world.”
