Customer Engagement Through Payments with Mike Milotich, CEO of Marqeta | Episode 493

Payments don’t fail because teams lack ambition, they fail because the infrastructure can’t keep up with what customers expect. We sit down with Mike Milotich, CEO of Marqeta, to unpack how modern issuer processing is changing card issuing from a rigid bank product into configurable, real-time payments infrastructure built for innovation.

We trace Mike’s 20-year journey across American Express, PayPal, Visa, and now Marqeta, and use that ecosystem view to explain what actually makes a card program work: issuer economics, consumer behavior, local market nuance, and the ability to iterate fast. Along the way, we break down what Marqeta does as an API-first, cloud-based issuer processor operating at global scale and high reliability, and why “building blocks” beat one-size-fits-all platforms when you’re trying to launch, learn, and adjust.

Then we look ahead at the biggest growth opportunities in card issuing and embedded finance: multinational issuing on a single stack, flexible credentials that can behave like debit, credit, and BNPL, and a broader product continuum that meets customers where they are in their financial journey. We also dig into personalization of rewards, AI-driven experiences, risk and fraud tooling, stablecoin-backed cards for faster cross-border movement, and the early shape of agentic commerce.

If you care about the future of payments, card issuing, and customer engagement, this episode is for you.

Transcript

Welcome And Show Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we talk to sea level leaders from across the payments landscape. We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments. We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast. I'm your host, Greg Myers, and today's special guest is Mike Miletic, the CEO of Marketta. So, Mike, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So before we dive into your career and the company, can you give us a quick snapshot of your personal background, maybe where you grew up, where you call home today, a few things like that?

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Sure. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and played a lot of sports as a kid and always had an analytical mindset which has shaped my career a lot as an adult. I stayed in California for undergrad, so I went to UC Santa Barbara. And after working for one year in San Francisco, I moved to the East Coast for a decade, most of which was in New York City. And then my wife and I moved back to the Bay Area to start a family about 17 years ago and have been here ever since. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

So can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to Marqueta?

Mike’s Career Across The Ecosystem

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Sure. I've been really fortunate to work for a lot of great companies and great leaders in payments. I've now been in payments for about 20 years. So I have a lot of different perspectives on the industry. So I would say it started first at American Express. So I saw the issuer perspective there and learned a lot about card hurder behavior and how to shape a card value proposition. And then once you do that, how that then in turn affects the usage and the behavior of that cardholder. And I looked, I learned at Amex both on worked in the consumer business as well as the SMB business. So that gave me a broad perspective. And then after American Express, I worked at PayPal, where then I was on the acquiring side of the ecosystem. And there I just given what my role was, I learned a lot about interchange and alternative forms of payment and more about consumer behavior and particularly analyzing it through A-B testing. So we used to run a lot of A B tests to understand the implications and then also a lot about local payments. So started to learn more about the local nuances of how payments work from country to country. And then from PayPal, I moved to Visa. And that's where I really came to better understand the full big picture of payments from the network perspective and how the ecosystem really works around the world. So got a much deeper understanding of the local nuances and how innovation is different in different markets and how it affects different markets. And then finally, that that led me to Marquetta, which is now the issuer processing view, and really focusing on the technology that enables issuers to create unique value propositions. What I've always loved about payments is just the many nuances and complexities that exist that make it a very fun business to be in in a lot of ways to add value. So the more you understand those subtleties, the more you can connect the dots and come up with solutions that really help customers drive their objectives. So that's how I've come to Marquetta in 20 years in payments.

What Marqeta Is And How It Works

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Okay, great. Well, thanks for sharing that. So let's dive in and talk about the company. I think most of our audience will know who Marquetta is, but maybe in your own words, tell us what Marquetta does.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Sure. So we're a modern payments platform for global innovators. So a lot of our largest customers are all disruptive in some way. And we are the issuer processor, which is the technology layer that is between the network and the issuer. And we are have we've been on the forefront of modern issuer processing for over a decade. We really are kind of the first player in this category of modern issuing. And what that means is that we are completely modern API cloud-based infrastructure that gives our customers a lot of flexibility and allows us to serve a lot of different verticals and use cases. And we do that across credit and debit, consumer and commercial, and we're certified in over 40 countries. So it's uh allowed us to achieve a lot of scale. You know, last year we did about 400 billion in volume, and we're you know approaching five nines of reliability. So we've really built a scale business that has a lot of diversity to it. And what I think makes Marquetta unique and just API infrastructure in general is we really provide the building blocks for our customers to put together in very unique ways. So what a lot of customers of ours feel like it almost feels like customization to them, but it's really configurability to us and allows them to build the products that are driving deeper engagement or driving new revenue streams or improving access to capital. Like each of their objectives might be a little bit different in what they're trying to achieve, but our our platform and the capabilities that it has allows them to put it together in a unique way that gives them a lot of control and a lot of agility in issuing payment credentials. So it's a very exciting business, and the business has uh, you know, a lot of momentum. Our volume growth has been over 30% for the last several quarters, and revenue and gross profit growth is like this past quarter was you know 19%, and our eBIT DOS growing over 60%. So the business has a lot of momentum as we've continued to mature. Okay.

Customer Challenges And Real Differentiators

SPEAKER_01 5:46

So what's the biggest challenge your company is solving for your customers right now?

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Yeah, I would say again, the ethos of what we're trying to provide is to give our customers more flexibility and control in their card programs as an issuer. Because if you think about, you know, going back the many decades of the card business, the more legacy platforms that served were really built for banks. And they were much more rigid because it wasn't, it didn't have modern, it wasn't built with modern technology. So it's a little bit slower and less flexible. It doesn't necessarily have real-time capabilities. So making reactions to inputs that are happening in in real time and just you know, slower onboarding and just the ability to move is a little bit slower. So what we have really focused on is how do we allow our customers again that that control and agility that they want in reacting and modifying their value proposition as they go along. And they utilize the Marquetta platform in a in a lot of unique ways. So, for example, like one of the challenges we're solving for a lot of customers now, and and we may talk more about this uh as we go, but you know, multinational card issuing capabilities is an example of something that's relatively new in the issuing space. That, you know, having one company that wants to operate in 20 countries as an issuer is relatively unique. And how can we abstract away some of the local nuances of those geographies and make it very seamless for them? Or something like uh what we call kind of a continuum of products of there are now many stages between debit and credit. You know, 10 or 15 years ago, it was debit or credit, and that was it. Now there's some things sort of in between those two where more and more people are injecting transaction-based lending or buy now pay later into a debit product, or they're doing more of a secured credit product to help people with credit building to get up to maybe that revolving credit product that they like. And so that's what we are helping our customers with is how to think more broadly and in a multinational way, and then how to service all their potential customers based on where they are in their financial journey and evolving along with them, which is a little bit different than how the issuing world, you know, again existed sort of a decade ago. It's more like we have a very specific product, and if you want something different, we got to move you to that product. Versus I think now it's more of an evolution and people want to engage with their customers on a continuous basis and not have them sort of switching card products all the time.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Okay. Well, what would you say differentiates Marketa from your competitors?

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Yeah, the biggest thing that makes us unique is the kind of the combination of comprehensive configurable card capabilities in an issuing platform. So the fact that we do debit and credit, consumer and commercial, we do that in over 40 countries, highly reliable with scale. So proven scale. The last two quarters, our our volume has been over 100 billion. And so the scale with which we do that, and then the expertise, since we've been catering to the a lot of the fintech winners, as I call them, the really disruptive companies are customers of ours. And so we have a lot of expertise in terms of what it takes to build a card program and make it successful across a lot of different use cases. And so that ability to help our customers, because particularly as we the service more and more of the embedded finance opportunity, which is more large, already established companies who are their primary businesses outside of financial services, they want that help, right? Uh the card business is actually quite complicated and nuanced, as I said. And so they they want that expertise to help them because what they're really after is engagement of their user base. And they are not payment experts and really don't want to invest in that way. They're looking for a partner who brings that expertise and can work with them and work with them over over time. And so, you know, there are a few things that you know I kind of have already mentioned that make us unique. So this multinational capability and doing that on a single stack. So you don't, as you move geographically, you don't have to do integrations to new platforms. You know, it's a single platform for us, whether you're in the US or in Europe, whether you're doing credit or debit, consumer commercial, it's it's all the same. And so that makes us as unique. And then again, this ability to really help you think differently about how to use a card program to solve certain challenges in your business. We have a lot of great examples from current customers where, you know, in the delivery business, you know, we solved a risk problem for those companies that makes it more seamless for you to use a DoorDash or an Uber or an Instacard on a regular basis. And in BuyNow PayLater, we help them with distribution, making it easy for people to use BuyNow PayLater at more and more merchants without all those players having to do a lot of technology connectivity. So we we figured out how to solve unique problems in in creative ways that's really added a lot of value for our customer

Where Issuing Growth Comes Next

SPEAKER_02 11:15

base.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Okay, well, let's talk about the future. Where do you see the biggest growth opportunity in your segment of payments?

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Yeah, there's there's many. I'll touch on a few, but I think there's there's so much so much opportunity out there. I would start with embedded finance. So our business started by servicing fintechs, and what's happening is now those fintechs have become the winners have become very big businesses. And but they also showed what was possible for non-banks to accomplish in the card business and in financial services. And so now what you have is much larger companies looking to do similar things, but they already have a built-in user base. So they have the they don't have to do what FinTech did, which was like build the business from scratch. They have the existing users and they just want to engage with them in different ways through a card program. And cards are unique because people make usually at least one payment every day. And so that allows you to have a lot of opportunity to engage with that customer base in a new way. And that's more and more we're seeing the opportunity. So, you know, last year in 2025, we signed three Fortune 500 companies. And if you look at our pipeline of the businesses we're talking to now, it's more and more that that size of business who's looking for really a full stack solution to engage their users. So that's you know one uh area of opportunity. Another one I would I would highlight is flexible credentials. So this is a a new innovation that's coming from the networks, where if you think about your wallet, right, and in almost anyone's wallet, they open it up and they have a probably one, at least one debit card, usually only one, and then multiple credit cards. And every purchase, you're sort of making a decision of which card you want to use for which type of transaction. You know, what's happening with flexible credentials is one product, one card product that can meet multiple payment needs. So it can be a debit card that also allows for buy now pay later, or a debit card and a credit card in one. So it's one credential that has multiple capabilities. And and why we we think this is so exciting is because when we do an annual survey that we call the state of payments, and you know, our survey last year in 2025 said that we asked, I think it's 5,000 consumers and small businesses, within a 30-day period, you know, what types of payment products did you use? And what we found in the US is that about 80% of people said they use cash, 75 plus percent use credit card, 70% use the debit card, 70% use some sort of P2P application. So people are using a variety of these tools, and and there's a real opportunity to say, could we put all of those things in one product? Right? Where then the the customer or the consumer is not having to make choices about which type of credential to use. They can really have a top-of-wallet credential that does all of those things in one so and has the intelligence to make choices for them. So you could say, when it's a purchase over $100, I'd like that to be credit. You know, if it's a grocery payment, I'd like that to be debit and sort of pre-program that in based on your preferences. So I think that's um an exciting growth area. Another one that I you know mentioned a little bit already is buy now, pay later. I think that it started out as something that was a little more narrow in terms of only online and probably only a certain demographic. It's becoming more and more mainstream. And I think people are really starting to understand the value from a transaction-based lending perspective or as a cash flow management tool. And so I think the big change that's happening in Buy Now Pay Later is it used to be more of a merchant value proposition where it was in the checkout online with a merchant. Now, more and more it's becoming a consumer value proposition where you're given a card, and on that card, buy now, pay later is a is a feature of the card. So that means now it can be used anywhere that card is accepted. And that's a big shift that's happening in the market as this becomes more and more mainstream. Maybe a couple other things I would say that are kind of interesting areas. So personalization of rewards, I think that's another area of interesting growth opportunity where personalization has come to most other parts of technology, but it still really hasn't come to card payments. Like if you and I have the same card product, it has the same reward. But with the way digital technology is evolving, we really believe there's an opportunity to be offering more dynamic rewards that are specific to someone's preferences. And that's something we're we've been building and we're putting into more and more value propositions, and AI will really help that. And then there's some newer areas like you know, stablecoin back cards. We think there's a lot of use for particularly multinational payments, agentic commerce, right, is a is another area that we feel like could be exciting that's issuer-led. So if I wanted to send out an agent to buy something for me, I would go first, I'd start with the the entity that I trust and that knows me and and use them the more my issuer to send out an agent to buy something. So, you know, those are those are all sort of maybe a couple of the newer areas that are still quite quite small but are exciting if you're thinking out three to five years.

What Success Looks Like In Five Years

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Okay. Well, mentioning three to five years, what does the set success look like for Marquetta in the next three to five years?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Yeah, I think we I I look at it our our business kind of through a few different lenses. So I would say first from like a market or a customer segment perspective, I would say first, we're in this evolution from supporting fintechs to working more and more in embedded finance, more enterprise customers, and ultimately banks. So ultimately, we would like to be supporting large banks because we feel like as these innovators keep changing and pushing the market forward, the banks ultimately are going to have to respond with similar value propositions and they're probably gonna need a different technology to support them to do that. So I would say, you know, if we as we looked out five years, we would want a lot more, again, Fortune 500 customers and some banks. I think from a more of a platform perspective capability, we're looking to further expand our credit business. So our our history was definitely in debit. And in more and more, we're moving into the credit space, which is about half of the US market, for example. So there's a huge opportunity there. And that's where things like personalization and and dynamic rewards and and being embedded to drive engagement with customers is sort of like the the new age co-brand. If you think about the co-brand business, it is already a big, a big business, but it's it's not that embedded or customized to you. In fact, a lot of times a co-brand partner, you're actually going to the bank, the bank's app to manage that card. You're not going to their experience. So we think that's something that's going to change in the coming years. And then also building all the services around our processing. So more of a value-added services concept that people are going to want risk and fraud tools. A lot of times we're starting to provide more of the front-end capabilities. So we'll provide you the app that allows you to have the card experience you want. So that's another area that I think will be a much bigger part of our business. And then lastly, I think from a geographic perspective, Europe has been a very strong growth driver of our business the last three years. Our business there from a volume from 2022 to 2025, it grew 8x. So it it expanded a lot. And now it's about a mid-teens percentage of our of our business. But I think there's a lot more potential in the UK and the EU to really drive unique card programs and again support a multinational customer base across North America and Europe. So those are, I guess, a few of the things that I think how I see our business evolving over the next three to five

Trends Reshaping Payments Globally

SPEAKER_02 19:42

years.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Okay. And you mentioned some things around stable coins and AI and agentic commerce. I mean, those are some of the biggest trends, things that that we talk about on this show all the time. But maybe if you want to double-click on some of those, or maybe there's some others, but what what are those biggest trends that are reshaping the payments industry in your view?

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Yeah, I would say a few things I I've touched on a little bit already. One, I think multinational issuing is something that everybody is thinking about. So even within our customer base now, 12 of our top 15 customers are in more than one country on our platform, and six of those 12 are in our at least five countries. And a lot of the business we win, like we have a customer that we just won some business that we're in the process of onboarding, that they're coming to us saying late this year they want to launch in the US, first half of next year, Canada, second half of next year Europe. So, because they're already a multinational business. And so they are thinking about this card offering as something they want to apply to their broader customer base. And that's a fairly new mindset actually in the card issuing space. So that's something that I think is is quite interesting. The other thing is this concept of like that product continuum, because what's happening in the co-brand market is that the products have gotten so premium to offer competitive rewards that a lot of people don't qualify, either from a like a FICO perspective, but also just from a spend. There's the spend limits that you have to hit in terms of the activity on the card. And so if I'm really trying to come up with a card product to drive engagement with my user base, then declining two-thirds of the people or three-quarters of the people who apply is not is obviously not helping me with engagement. So, so how do I come up with a suite of products that I can offer my customers to kind of meet them wherever they are in their financial journey and have an evolution as they maybe mature over time, they they you know they get older. I first acquired them when they're a little younger, as they you know have more discretionary spending. Do they need a different product and evolving with them? That's another thing that I think is is shaping the payments business. So things like credit building, transaction. Lending embedded into debit products, I think, are going to be more and more in the issuing space. And then I do think stable coins are something that are going to be pretty impactful over time. There are a lot of, it allows for the movement of money to be faster and less expensive. And so, particularly businesses that are doing more disbursements or want to support a multinational customer base, you know, a stable coin back card could be very powerful because I personally believe it'll be a long time before you can actually conduct commerce with the coin, right? It's going to be a long time before there's broad acceptance and there's so many different coins out there that that's also what makes that a challenge. So having a card product that allows the stablecoin to be useful for commerce is sort of a proven way to do it. And that's another area that I think will, you know, is an exciting thing that will a long time from now we'll look back and say, okay, that that was sort of a turning point in the in the payments

Career Advice And The Engagement Shift

SPEAKER_02 23:02

market. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Well, a couple of final questions. If you could go back and give yourself advice at the start of your career, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02 23:10

I would say to me, curiosity is a really important trait. Like really trying to understand how things work, how they truly work, so that you can add more value to your team and the company is a really important thing that I've learned. Like I would say, luckily, when I was early in my career, just inherently I was curious, but many great, great leaders over time have really taught me how to harness that curiosity to add value. Because particularly in technology, you know, there's there's usually a good amount of complexity to the business. And the more you you have that that perspective and really understanding, I think you, you know, you just become more valuable within the business. Also, maybe the second thing I would say is I probably if I had more of a eye on the long term, I probably would have been more thoughtful about certain career choices. Like ultimately, I I got myself sort of on the right path. And obviously things worked out. But whenever people come to me for career advice, I always ask them, like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like, let's let's start let's start with that. And even if you're already 20 years into your career, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like, you know, 10 years from now, what do you see yourself doing? And then start working yourself backwards and and being honest about the skills and experiences you would need. Because you need to keep sort of putting tools in your toolbox that helps you be ready for that role. And I think I I probably could have been a little a little more focused on what skills and capabilities I needed, as opposed to like I feel like a lot of young people, it's like I want to get promoted. Right? Like that's that's sort of how you you think uh from a goal perspective instead of like, well, actually, if I add these capabilities and experiences, the promotions will come. So sort of reversing the equation a little bit, I I probably would have picked up on that a little sooner than I did in my career. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Well, I think that's that that's a great answer for everybody. So I hope the the younger and the older people are listening because I think it's it's great advice. So one final question. What's the one thing that payment leaders who might be listening to the show today, what should they be thinking about right now?

SPEAKER_02 25:26

I think that the biggest shift that I I believe our customers and prospects are really thinking about is customer engagement. I think a lot of, again, if you go back 10 years and and and before, even five years really, a lot of card products were designed, maybe with some loyalty in mind, but mostly about monetization. It was really another means of monetizing. And I think as businesses are becoming more and more digital, more interactive, more customized, payments is a little behind in that regard, largely because there's a good amount of regulatory, right? Like it's a highly regulated business. And so it can't, it can't move quite as quickly. But customer expectations in terms of what they expect from more of a digital product, there's a totally different bar today than there was a decade ago. And I think whether it's embedded finance or agentic commerce or global expansion, like all these things we've talked about, all this is really comes down to like how do I best drive engagement with my customers? And the ones who do that well, I think will ultimately be the businesses that are successful. And to do that well, you likely are going to need, you know, very modern infrastructure that's quite flexible because your customers' needs will also evolve over time and you need to be able to respond to that. So I think that's really what I would I would say most of the businesses we talk to, that's what they are are very focused on.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yeah, it's it's ironic, isn't it, that it kind of always comes back to the fundamentals, right? You got to take care of your customer.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

And you and you can, and it's easy to get distracted by lots of other uh details that also need to get worked out. But but ultimately, what are like the customer needs and and how do I solve them and and drive them? Like in in our case, a lot of customers are actually looking to help their core business. So how do I use a product a card product to actually drive my core business, not as a secondary business, which is how I feel like you know, co-brands maybe thought about it like that 20 years ago. And now businesses are saying, no, I actually want that product to drive my core. And and how do I best do that? And that's a a little bit of a different exercise.

Final Thanks And Listener Next Steps

unknown 27:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Well, Mike, this has been a great episode. Just want to open the floor, see if there's anything else you want to talk about before we wrap up the show.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

No, I don't think so, Greg. I appreciate you having me. It's been a good discussion.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yeah, well, thank you so much. I know your time's very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

And to all your listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well. And until the next story.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast. Make sure you visit our website at leaders in payments.com, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes. If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.