Marqeta
Modern card-issuing platform whose API can spin up a payment card in a second — the engine behind many apps' virtual cards.
Founded in 2010 by Jason Gardner in Oakland, California. The key idea is just-in-time funding: the card is loaded with money at the exact moment it is swiped, after Marqeta's code has approved the purchase over an API call. That makes card issuing programmable in a way the legacy processors never imagined.
The platform powers virtual and physical cards for the likes of DoorDash, Instacart and Affirm, and went public in 2021. Where Fiserv and FIS built card issuing as heavy, batch-bound infrastructure, Marqeta sold the same thing as a developer-friendly API — the same move Stripe pulled on acquiring.