Intern Product Security Engineer

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

Marqeta debut decision tools as fraud threats increase. By PYMNTS | March 31, 2026 Card issuing platform Marqeta has debuted a tool designed to combat increasingly sophisticated payments fraud. The company on Tuesday (March 31) announced an enhancement to its real-time decisioning (RTD) offering with "an AI-powered risk score that analyzes transaction risk levels at the point of the authorization decision." According to a news release, the new capabilities help Marqeta customers make smarter, data-driven risk assessments to prevent payment fraud and reduce false declines. The release cites projections that global payment fraud is expected to jump 153% by the end of the decade, highlighting the need for fraud detection models that can detect new fraud patterns and stay on top of emerging threats. Marqeta says it addresses this challenge by melding its RTD authorization rules with the predictive power of machine learning in order to continuously spot new fraud patterns and fend off emerging threats. "Today's fraud threats are evolving faster than ever, requiring businesses to keep pace as they scale their card programs," said Anthony Peculic, Marqeta's interim chief product officer. Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks! "By embedding AI-powered controls and advanced machine learning into the authorization process, we enable customers to expand confidently while also strengthening their fraud defense as they scale." In other fraud prevention news, PYMNTS wrote Tuesday about new research that examines the rising threat of bots. That research shows that 56.3% of companies are now dealing with threats tied to bots or agents, 58.6% struggle with bot-driven fraud, and 52.3% say bot traffic picked up over the last 12 months. Financial services firms are feeling this strain most acutely: 60.6% said they've witnessed increased bot traffic, the largest share of any industry. Companies also lose an average 3.1% of annual revenue due identity verification gaps - a yearly collective hit of around $95 billion across the companies surveyed. "The most telling data point may be the confidence gap. Nearly all respondents - 96.3% - say they are confident in their ability to detect harmful bots. Yet nine in 10 report challenges from harmful bot traffic," PYMNTS wrote. "That mismatch helps explain why 'good enough' identity stacks are becoming a strategic liability. The companies that appear to be coping best are moving beyond fragmented checks toward integrated, global identity platforms." The research also showed that nearly 79% of companies using global identity platforms say vendor quality and reliability drive confidence in their verification procedures, while 65.6% report lower digital transaction decline rates and 62.5% saw lower false declines over the last year.