i2c reports 42% client renewal growth as PowerOne scales globally. i2c Inc. has published a year-in-review summary for its PowerOne unified banking and payments platform, citing a 42% rise in clients that renewed or expanded their programmes over two years and a 46% growth in its largest client portfolios over the same period. The Redwood City, California-based company processes more than $70 billion in annual transaction volume across 216 markets and claims 99.999% historical platform availability. The announcement is framed around a wave of new client wins rather than a specific deal or funding event. Named additions span regulated banks, digital-asset firms and gaming-payments operators: Crypto.com extended its global card programme across dozens of markets without building new infrastructure; Belize Bank migrated its Mastercard and Visa portfolios onto PowerOne without service interruption; and Sightline Payments, working alongside Cross River Bank, used the platform to launch what it described as a first-of-its-kind payments ecosystem for the US gaming industry. Latin American digital bank Inter also joined the client roster to support international expansion, and Wealthsimple, one of Canada's larger fintech platforms, cited the platform's configurability as a key factor in its partnership. Platform architecture as the competitive argument. The commercial thesis i2c is advancing is one shared by a small number of global card-processing vendors: that a single, unified technology stack outperforms stitched-together multi-vendor arrangements on reliability, speed of product configuration, and total cost of ownership. The company claims more than 300 APIs, more than 100,000 pre-coded building blocks, and 1.5 million engineering hours invested annually in continuous development, with 30% of its workforce dedicated to research and development. That argument has gained traction partly because the alternative is genuinely painful. New American Banker research, conducted in partnership with i2c, found that 88% of financial institutions have accelerated their modernisation timelines in response to competition from digital-first banks and non-bank providers, with legacy processing architecture cited most often as the primary barrier. The tension between proven scale on old infrastructure and agility on modern stacks is a real operational dilemma, and it shapes purchasing decisions at the programme manager and chief technology officer level. Founder and chief executive Amir Wain described the platform's direction in terms that signal a move toward agentic AI capabilities, framing unified data and decisioning workflows as the prerequisite architecture. "Our work toward agentic AI builds on the advantage of unified data, workflows, and decisioning, creating a foundation where intelligence can operate across the platform rather than being bolted onto fragmented systems," he said. Market context and competitive landscape. The card-issuing and processing segment is consolidating around a handful of global platforms. i2c competes against processors with significantly larger balance sheets, including Marqeta, Galileo (now part of SoFi), and established network-affiliated processing arms. Differentiation in this space tends to come from configurability, speed to market for new card programmes, and the depth of support for non-standard use cases such as multi-currency prepaid, crypto-linked debit and gaming wallets. The Sightline and CoinZoom client wins suggest i2c is deliberately targeting these higher-complexity, higher-margin niches rather than competing on volume alone. Industry recognition during the year included placement in IDC FinTech Rankings' Top 100, a Leading Vendor designation from Celent in card issuing and processing, and Established Leader status in Juniper Research's Modern Card Issuing Platforms Market 2025-2030 report. The company also joined Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program and the Open Standard USD initiative, signalling ambition in stablecoin payment infrastructure. i2c also made several senior leadership appointments, including a new chief financial officer, chief revenue officer, chief marketing officer and general counsel, suggesting the company is building out the executive layer typically associated with a business preparing for a liquidity event or a significant expansion phase, though no such plans were disclosed in the release. AI level 1 of 5: written by Darlyn Ho; AI helped with tone, structure or wording; edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean

Marqeta adds money-movement rails in 30 markets via Banking Circle. Marqeta's deal to plug Banking Circle's account and money-movement rails into 30 additional European countries is less a routine partnership than the clearest signal yet that the modern card-issuer is no longer content to be only a card-issuer. Having tracked the issuer-processor model since Marqeta's 2021 IPO, the pattern is familiar: the same convergence that pushed Adyen and Stripe to bundle issuing onto their acquiring stacks is now running in reverse, with a pure issuing platform reaching for the accounts-and-payments layer to defend its margins. The expansion lets Marqeta (NASDAQ: MQ) offer multi-currency virtual accounts and local European payment rails alongside its card-issuing platform, with Luxembourg-licensed Banking Circle supplying the regulated banking infrastructure underneath. It builds on Marqeta's 2025 acquisition of TransactPay, which gave it a European e-money and card-issuing footing, and aligns the European stack with what the company already runs in the United States and the United Kingdom. The scale signal is real but worth reading carefully. Marqeta processed close to $400 billion in total processing volume (TPV) in 2025 and now operates in more than 40 countries, and it cites 8x growth in European card-program TPV between 2022 and 2025 (Banking Circle; Marqeta via Business Wire). Eight-fold growth, though, is off a small base - Europe remains a minority of group volume, and Marqeta's revenue has long been concentrated in a handful of large customers led by Block's Cash App. Owning the account and money-movement layer is how Marqeta widens that customer base beyond single-product card programs. "Europe represents one of our most important growth markets, and bringing these tools to multinational and regional businesses enables them to build the innovative payment experiences that are crucial to their success," said Anthony Peculic, Interim Chief Product Officer at Marqeta. "By aligning our European offering with the U.S. and the U.K., we're providing a single platform for card issuing, account and money movement, and program management." Banking Circle framed its half of the deal as the regulated plumbing. "Our role is to provide the regulated banking and payment infrastructure that enables partners to scale confidently across Europe," said Mikkel Gronlykke, President of Banking Circle. The competitive response is already visible across the issuer-processor field. Paymentology raised $175 million to layer credit and stablecoin add-ons onto its issuer-processor stack, chasing the same multi-product logic. Stripe Issuing and Adyen continue to fold card issuing into their broader acquiring platforms, while bank-infrastructure incumbents FIS-owned Galileo, Enfuce and Marqeta itself compete for the same European program managers. The strategic question is no longer who can issue a card, but who can issue a card and move the money around it under one contract and one regulatory umbrella. The move also lands in a market re-rating embedded finance. Temenos's acquisition of additiv and AstroPay's embedded-finance launch point to the same thesis - value is migrating to whoever owns the orchestration layer between a brand and a regulated balance sheet. Equity analysts covering MQ have framed the Banking Circle deal as a test of whether Marqeta can turn an issuing narrative into an embedded-finance one, and whether that re-rates a stock that has traded on Cash App concentration risk since listing. For Marqeta's customers - fintechs, neobanks and increasingly non-financial brands embedding payments - the practical win is consolidation: fewer vendors, one programme-management console, and money movement that no longer requires a separate banking partner in each European market. For Banking Circle, it is distribution, putting its rails inside a platform that already reaches dozens of program managers. The bet is that bundling beats best-of-breed in European embedded finance, just as it did in card acquiring. Expect the next phase to be a credit and stablecoin push - the add-ons Paymentology is already selling - as issuer-processors race to become the single financial-infrastructure contract their customers never have to leave. Whether that widens Marqeta's customer concentration fast enough to satisfy the market is the number to watch in its next two earnings prints. For comparison on how acquirers are bundling from the other direction, see our coverage of Adyen's agentic-checkout push. Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011. He holds a degree in Business Administration and has experience producing real-time news, from both buy-side and sell-side, as well as for retail traders, brokers and service providers. Steves' work has appeared in a variety of online publications including FX Street, NewsBTC, FinanceFeeds, and The Industry Spread. Rick has great interest in the dynamics of the trading industry. The never-ending clash between technology, economics, regulation, and more importantly, the people. * August 3, 2018 * December 13, 2024 * August 30, 2018 * June 28, 2018 * March 27, 2020 * June 23, 2026 * June 22, 2026 * June 21, 2026 * June 25, 2026 * June 23, 2026 * June 22, 2026