Marqeta founder and CEO Jason Gardner told Insider the deal was less a sale than a partnership that came through a years-long relationship with Goldman, which invested in Marqeta in 2016.
"It's not a transaction, per se," Gardner said. "It's years of getting to know the team, sharing roadmaps of where we're headed and what we're going to do, which ultimately comes to Goldman Sachs choosing Marketa to help them build these products." The startup has raised over $520 million to date from investors, including Coatue, Greylock, and Spark Capital, as well as the corporate venture arms of Mastercard and Visa. It was last valued at $4.3 billion following a$4.
At the end of 2019, Marqeta had issued 140 million cards since its launch in 2010. In 2020 alone, it nearly doubled that count to 270 million total cards issued, an increase of over 90%.