Shares of payment processing company Marqeta closed up 13% after its market debut Wednesday on the Nasdaq. Shares closed at $30.52, giving the company a market cap of just over $16 billion.
Marqeta priced just over 45 million shares at $27 apiece on Tuesday, above its initial $20 to $24 target range. The company raised $1.2 billion at an implied $15.2 billion valuation, up from its last private market valuation last year of about $4.3 billion.
Marqeta has become one of the hottest businesses in digital commerce. It’s a two-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company and ranked No. 7 on this year’s list.
Founded in 2010 and based in Oakland, California, Marqeta sells payment technology that’s designed to detect potential fraud and ensure that money is properly routed. The company issues customized physical cards that look like credit and debit cards, which contractors from DoorDash or Instacart use to make point-of-sale purchases from restaurants or supermarkets.
In its IPO prospectus, Marqeta disclosed annualized revenue growth in the first quarter of 123% to $108 million, while its net loss narrowed to $12.8 million from $14.5 million a year earlier. In 2020, annual revenue more than doubled to $290.3 million.
The company says the total addressable global market for card payments has reached $45 trillion and is expected to grow to $80 trillion by 2030. The growth is coming from digital banks and other online and mobile services that are using the Marqeta card-issuing platform to offer payment programs to their customers. A decade ago the technology didn’t exist.
“We created modern card issuing,” CEO Jason Gardner said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Wednesday morning before shares started trading. “Today in the United States there’s nearly $6.7 trillion of card volume and we are simply scratching the surface with $60 billion in volume.”
Gardner’s stake in the company is worth nearly $2 billion based on the IPO price.
“We either support their core business or we are their core business,” Gardner added. “This really affects a lot of consumers at the point of sale, whether it’s their ability to use Klarna or Affirm or order food on an app like DoorDash or Instacart.”
Marqeta says it’s issued more than 320 million cards to its customer to date. Many of its clients are coming off record years as the pandemic pushed commerce to mobile devices.
In addition to meal-delivery companies, Marqeta powers Square‘s debit card for small business owners and its popular Cash App for peer-to-peer payments. Affirm and Klarna, which provide small-dollar lending to consumers for purchases like bikes and TVs, use Marqeta’s technology to move money with their installment loans.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs were the lead underwriters for Marqeta’s offering.
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