Marqeta, Inc. ($MQ)
Earnings Call Transcript · May 19, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Connor Allen
AnalystsHi, everybody. Thanks for coming. My name is Connor Allen. I'm a payments analyst here at JPMorgan, and we're really happy to have Mike Milotich here, CEO of Marqeta. Mike, thanks for coming.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesThank you so much for having me.
Connor Allen
AnalystsSo I thought we could just kick off with the state of the union a little bit. We talked before this about your first quarter and kind of the reaction to it. So maybe you can just start off with what you saw in the print, the recap of the quarter and any surprises you saw.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesSure. We had a very good quarter. In my view, our TPV growth was 33%. Net revenue and gross profit, both 19%. All those were on the high end of our range of expectations. So did well. Our EBITDA growth was 66%, which was much better. And net income of $8 million, which is a milestone for us, our first quarter on a pure operating basis, generating positive net income. And on top of that, we announced several good wins in terms of customers who are expanding geographically or customers who are doing -- expanding upon what we'll talk more about, I'm sure, the product continuum of credit and debit and then many products that are in between and even started processing for one of the large financial institutions in the U.S. So I would say, overall, we felt very good about the quarter. And no surprises, mostly as expected.
Connor Allen
AnalystsSo despite coming in at the high end of gross profit, you didn't raise the full year guide. Could you talk about maybe why that is, maybe your kind of approach to guidance overall?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesSure. Well, when we start the year, I mean, first of all, in the first quarter, our earnings is in late February. So we should be pretty good at that point at understanding what's going to happen in the first quarter. And our thoughts on the full year likely aren't going to change that much. So for us, we ended up on the higher end of our gross profit range. So we were still in the range, but on the high end. And on a full year basis, we also provide a range. And so our view was we haven't seen enough to say we feel any different about the last 3 quarters of the year. So we're still within that original range we gave. It's just a little early in terms of having a lot of new information that changes our perspective. I think we did raise our EBITDA and our net income because Q1 was materially better. And we -- if you just flowed that through to the full year, it made a difference. And so we made that change. But we try to be transparent and -- with guidance and give a realistic in our actual opinion of how things are going to perform. And in this case, we, again, were a little better than expected, but not enough to change the full year at this point.
Connor Allen
AnalystsSo there's maybe a perception that your view of the back half had changed because you hadn't done that. But as you said, there was no change in your view of what the back half could be on the growth?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesNot at this point on the growth side.
Connor Allen
AnalystsAnd maybe just to, like, check the box, was there anything in the macro environment you'd call out that might have contributed? It sounds like no. But anything on the macro you'd highlight?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesMacro, I mean, there's a lot of concern and everyone is watching closely. But I would say we see what I think a lot of other payments companies have said, which is a very stable, healthy consumer and SMB spending. We -- the way -- one of the ways we look at it is we break up the market between sort of high, medium and low discretionary spending because that's where we feel like you'll see trade-offs being made or you'll see pullbacks on the more discretionary items, for example. And we're really seeing it -- it's very stable. If you look at Q1 versus Q4, no discernible change. So right now, no -- nothing of concern that we can see in our numbers.
Connor Allen
AnalystsOkay. Great. So stepping back maybe away from the quarter, away from kind of the tactical questions around guidance. Growth is super impressive. It's above 30% on volume, has been for a few quarters now. And I have a whole series of questions here that, I think, we'll go through across the different vectors of kind of where that's coming from. But maybe one to start out would be kind of how you disaggregate that growth between new and existing customers. And I wanted to talk to the pipeline and all the buildup to that. But at a high level, is there a way that you kind of approach that?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesWell, I would say we start a lot of the way we talk about it on our earnings call is by use case. So that's one way we look at it. And clearly, Buy Now, Pay Later and expense management are both the stars. Buy Now, Pay Later growing close to 60%, expense management growing over 40%. And those are good-sized businesses for us, sort of in the mid-teens to high teens as a percentage of our total TPV. And so that's one of the factors. In terms of looking at it on a new customer basis. The way we typically look at it is when programs launch. So we look at the programs that have launched in the last 2 years, so 2024 and 2025. And among those customers in the quarter, in Q1, that contributed about 10% of our TPV. So a pretty meaningful contribution considering those programs have only been live for, at most, 2 years. And when you look at the breakdown, it's growing well over 100% overall. And how that splits, to answer your question, is that the new customers, so in that time period in '24 and '25, we signed about 40 new logos. And that volume is growing about 100% year-over-year in the quarter. But we also land and expand a lot with our existing customer base. And so one of the other stats we've shared previously is that among our top 15 customers, in that time of '24 and '25, 14 of the 15 launched at least one new program with us. And among those 15, it was over 30 programs total that were launched. And those existing customers that expanded with those new programs were growing well over 200% on a year-over-year basis. So -- and that's quite common what we see because a new logo, you're still figuring things out and getting the value proposition right versus a lot of our existing customers, they're expanding into a new geography or an adjacent product line, and they already have it down, they have a rhythm. And so -- and obviously, this coincided with the rollout of flexible credentials and things of that nature that have really taken off. And so that's the contribution in terms of how we look at it between sort of newer business versus programs that have been around a while.
Connor Allen
AnalystsSo you have a cohort of these existing customers that are large. They're launching programs and those probably ramp faster, like you're saying. And the new logos that are coming on, and those take some time. I did want to ask you about some of those. So you mentioned a couple of new wins this quarter. You touched on it. Geographic expansion, I think you mentioned Ramp and Sezzle there. Portfolio migration for another customer, I had written down here. Product expansion with another, and then the FI that we'll get back to. The momentum seems really good. Was there anything you'd highlight maybe among those? Like it felt like kind of -- there was a longer list this quarter than most. What would you highlight among them?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesI would say the 2 themes that we tried to highlight on the call that, I think, are really important because they're relatively new to the issuing business. One is this concept of multinational issuing. 10 years ago, because everything was dominated by banks, there just are very few truly multinational banks beyond, like, treasury and things like that, like actual card issuing. And -- but that's not the case for fintechs who started in a market, but then now they think about them more -- themselves more like tech businesses. So once they got product market fit in a market, they start to look at adjacent markets and other countries. And the same thing in embedded finance. So a lot of the larger enterprises we're talking to now, they're all rolling multinationals. And so if they're going to roll out a card product, they're thinking multinational from the beginning. So this expansion with both Sezzle and Ramp is just another extension where we made a comment on our call that of our top 15 customers, 12 of them are in more than 1 country with us. So this concept of multinational issuing, I think, is going to continue to be a bigger and bigger story. And we're uniquely positioned because of the way our platform works. The other major theme that we tried to highlight with the other 2 wins is this concept of a product continuum. So rather than just it's debit or it's revolving credit, there's actually some products in between where you've got debit with Buy Now, Pay Later infused in a flexible credential format. You've got secured credit, which is really a credit builder-like product. You have charge card, and then you have revolving credit. And I think the way the market is evolving is, again, the way fintechs and embedded finance customers are thinking, they want to serve all their customers who use them regardless of where they are in their financial journey, which is usually not how things worked before. It was either a premium card or it was a very targeted value proposition. These businesses are, a lot of times, looking for engagement. So they want to serve the whole customer base. And so they want all those products to represent all the demographics of their potential user base. And so the other 2 deals we talked about was a very large debit program, neobank on our platform who rolled out a secured card as an extension. And then I would say the other one was even more interesting because it was -- it sort of has all the ingredients of a very fun win where it's a migration from a competitor. It's a new innovative solution where they're going to pair a Buy Now, Pay Later with a secure card value proposition. We're going to use Mastercard One credentials. So we're going to be one of the first programs to utilize that and sort of, once again, demonstrate our leadership in flexible credentials. They came to us because the existing program is in the U.S., but they're thinking multinationally. And they think maybe one day they want to do revolving credit. So that's why they're moving to our platform. So it's just one of those fun wins where a lot of the things that we would consider to be some of the things that make us unique is exactly why this business is coming to us.
Connor Allen
AnalystsA bunch of those boxes.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesThat's right. And then, of course, getting in with a large financial institution in the U.S. is a hallmark. It's -- we're starting small, but we're getting our foot in the door. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that, but that's a very exciting development for us.
Connor Allen
AnalystsYes, lots of ways to go from that. Maybe I did want to ask kind of on, like, the geographic expansion as a theme. I did want to ask about Europe later, but maybe as we think about it, like I noticed from that announcement that there was quite a few regions. So maybe you could just talk about like the flexibility you have to expand globally with these customers? Because obviously, you have the presence in Europe. You've talked about some in Latin America. Is there anything else you can maybe add about the flexibility you have there?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesYes. I would say the way we -- so we are certified -- because every market, you have to be certified by the network to operate there, and we're certified in over 40 countries. And the way we really think about it is we focus on U.S., Canada, Europe, including U.K., Australia and New Zealand. Those are the places that we will serve local customers. And then we also process in several other countries in Asia and Latin America, but to serve our multinational customers, not to target local business. So that's sort of the delineation. So we're looking for customers who sort of originate, if you will, in U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, but then we will help them. Like in the Ramp announcement, we -- there were several countries in Asia, countries in Latin America. So we will -- as they look to expand, we will support that expansion. But in those markets, we're not trying to target local business. And so that's how we think about it. And again, as this becomes more and more of a trend, as these companies want to go to more and more markets, we're finding -- we're continuing to expand. So even as we mentioned on our earnings call, Ramp, there are several other countries coming later in the year. So because as they sign up more multinational customers to their service, those customers say, well, I have employees in many countries and I would like you to support me there. And that then drives us to try to support them as much as we can.
Connor Allen
AnalystsGot it. And I imagine once you have some presence, some like license in those regions, you're building a muscle that only supports you over time to expand.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesThat's right. That's right. You do it -- you have to do ROI. Some places are -- they'll ask you to go to a place that's a very challenging market. Payments is a very local business. And so some of these countries, you really have to look at the local laws. And things like disputes, that's something we all sort of take for granted, but the rules can be very different from country to country, and you've got to make sure you know how to abide by them. And there are some markets that are just not very friendly to outsiders, particularly U.S. businesses. So we try to look at countries where we think there'll be broader overlap in our customer base and places where there's meaningful opportunity. In some places, sometimes, we just have to say that it's a lot of work. Unless we're going to have a different economic arrangement, we don't think that's a market we can support you.
Connor Allen
AnalystsSo maybe we can shift and talk about a region where you are investing and clearly see ROI, is Europe. I think it's something like mid-teens percent of your revenue. It's not quite doubling anymore, but close, growing really fast. Maybe you can just talk about the success you've had there. And just to like build in a couple of questions, kind of TransactPay and whether that's unlocked what you've hoped it would in the region?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesYes. We're really excited about the Europe business. We see a lot of opportunity. The competitive environment is a little different there. In terms of there are fewer larger entities and you have a lot more, sort of, local processors that you end up competing with. So we have several advantages in terms of scale, capability and innovative capabilities that has a lot of -- that's attractive to a lot of the local European businesses. The other aspect of it is getting back to this multinational theme. So if you look at our Europe TPV, that's growing quite fast. About 75% of the growth from a contribution perspective is coming from European businesses, but 25% of the growth is coming from multinationals who have expanded into Europe. So that is also -- was one of the big drivers of our TransactPay acquisition. So with -- before we had acquired TransactPay, which gave us the EMI licenses we needed to do program management, we could process in Europe, but our offering was not consistent with what we could offer in U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand in terms of being able to also take on program management. And that had -- there were 2 reasons why we really wanted that in Europe. One was to serve multinationals. We wanted our service to be more consistent. So as customers expand globally, what we're offering them, it looks and feels similar from place to place. And we didn't have that before without this EMI license. The second thing that's targeting the more European customer base is the higher end of the market. So the much larger companies want one entity to do processing, program management and bring the license. They don't want to contract with multiple parties. And so acquiring TransactPay, getting that license and having the program management also enables us to serve the high end of the market, which is really where we're focused now as a business. And so that -- so you put those things together with the momentum we have, and we're really excited about the opportunities in Europe.
Connor Allen
AnalystsI think -- yes, I think you've actually mentioned a deal or 2 that has kind of been unlocked because of it, like you've already seen some traction with some announced deals.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesCorrect. We already have some -- like a long-standing U.S. customer for expense management. Once we got that license, okay, now we'll go to Europe because that's going to be very easy now for me to make that product -- make that geographic expansion versus before they would -- they have a lot more work to have done and beyond processing, which we could have done.
Connor Allen
AnalystsYes. I'm sure it won't double forever, but it does sound like it's growing well. We'll continue to track it. Maybe shifting gears a little bit to credit, if that makes sense.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesSure.
Connor Allen
AnalystsSimilarly, kind of acquired some capabilities in that part of the market a few years ago. Candidly, I would say the, kind of, rollout has been slower than I would have expected. But turning to you, how would you kind of acknowledge how that's...
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesYes. That's very fair. I mean, 2 years ago, if we had sat here and said, okay, where are we going to be at this point in May of 2026, I would have liked us to be a little further along. The credit comes with a lot of complexity, both in terms of -- obviously, there's more financial risk involved for the various players, maybe not us, but our bank partners or our customer. And there's also the compliance and regulatory environment. It also -- there's just a lot more things to consider. And so I would say it hasn't -- maybe we underestimated some of that. But now we've got some real momentum. We have consumer and commercial programs live on our platform. We've got several additional programs, particularly on the consumer side that are going to be rolling out later this year. And now we have a -- because of that experience, now we have several things in our pipeline that are more what, I think, people -- when we talk about our credit business, could immediately go to a co-brand credit-like offering. So a stand-alone credit offering. So we have more and more of those opportunities now are coming to us, which is great. But I would say again, getting back to some of the themes, though, I would say where we're maybe seeing more benefit of something that we hadn't really considered a couple of years ago is, again, this product continuum basis. So now we have a lot of people who may not be launching a co-brand credit card yet. But like this deal we won in the quarter, they're saying, well, I'm going to do a secured credit and a Buy Now, Pay Later proposition, but I want to do credit later. So the fact that you're on a single stack and that can be done very easily later is very attractive to me. So we are making more progress in credit than it appears because people just say credit, that must mean the co-brand. But it is fair that we would like to be a little further.
Connor Allen
AnalystsAnd I mean, internally, our view is that -- I mean, we've seen some neobanks already offer and take advantage of -- it's a win-win in many circumstances. And so our view is that we'll see more secured credit, more -- I like the way you described kind of multiproduct across the kind of consumer stack, and it feels like you would benefit from that.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesWhat's happened over time is the co-brand credit market has really gone premium. So in the -- rewards have gotten so competitive, they've become very premium products, which means the more people are declined for the card than are accepted. And so -- and as again, the market evolves to people who are looking at these cards more to drive engagement in their core business than just a sort of an additional monetization engine, that's not a good equation for them. They don't want to be declining that many people. And so they start looking at -- we're getting a lot more interest in co-brand debit, secured products, integrating Buy Now, Pay Later to set up sort of a path, right, of that can support that customer or SMB as they evolve over time.
Connor Allen
AnalystsGot you. And of course, the Flex credential or the Mastercard One as like a layer on top of and around a lot of that.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesExactly. Because what that allows is that you don't have to recard. So in the past, as that consumer may be moved up the value chain, if you will, you would have had to recard them every time, which then gets you concerned that then maybe they'll change. That's why people don't like to recard. The flexible credential gives you that opportunity to use the same card even while the value proposition is evolving.
Connor Allen
AnalystsYes. Shift gears again back to something you discussed, which is the kind of financial institution opportunity you did. It was a pretty unique announcement. I think it was a wallet funding kind of like a new construct by my ear. So maybe you could speak about that a little bit, but just -- it's been a long-term opportunity for a long time. And I don't think anyone had expectations that it would move quickly. But just check in on that kind of front.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesYes, there's -- the conversations with banks are becoming more frequent and substantive is what I would say, probably over the last year. And my view of why that's happening is because the fintech winners have been crowned, as I like to say, and they are now expanding their businesses, and they're becoming big companies, many of them are becoming quite big companies. And then what's following in their wake are some large enterprises that are getting into the space. And I think that's creating more and more pressure on the incumbents to potentially modernize. So there's just a lot more effort to put into and thinking about modernizing because it's becoming clear and clear that the value proposition doesn't stack up, and they're losing share, both on the consumer side and on the commercial side. And so when we're talking to financial institutions, they kind of fall into 3 paths. Well, I used -- I would have told you only 6 months ago, 2, but now a third has emerged. One is a full migration, right? I'm going to actually get off my old stack and go on to the new. That's probably less common because it's a lot of work and there's risk involved. But there are conversations we have with banks who are considering that. The second is more de novo. So we're going to -- we want to come out with a new commercial card or a new consumer value proposition, and we're going to do that on a more modern stack so we can have the kind of capabilities we want for that product. That's probably the most common. The third is what we're doing with this bank, which is infusing modern technology into their existing product. So think of this as they don't want to change all their technology and they've got millions of cards issued, and they're like, we don't want to recard, but is there a way you could help us? We want to inject a line of credit, almost like a Buy Now, Pay Later-like transaction-based lending offering into those products. Is there a way to do that without having to do a lot of technology work? And so we came up with a solution that mirrors a lot of how we supported our Buy Now, Pay Later customers when they move for the point of sale. So it started as a pure online business, and then it started to move to the point of sale where when you're in the store, you see something you want to buy that's out of your price range and you say, "I would like to buy something for x amount, and I would like financing for it. What is your offer?" And then they would get you approved. And if it was a Buy Now, Pay Later, they would push you essentially a virtual card that then you would pay with. This is a similar solution where you would go into the app, the wallet that this bank has created and you said, "I want to establish a line of credit for this purchase." And if they approve you, what happens is the customer doesn't really -- the cardholder doesn't really understand what's happening. But essentially, there's a virtual card that's kind of in the shadows underneath the transaction, and that's what's being used to pay the merchant without that cardholder actually understanding that's what's happening. And then they've now entered into an arrangement on this line of credit with the bank. So it's allowed the bank to offer something very innovative that has a very good user experience. So it feels very slick because they don't actually understand what -- how it's being executed from a payments perspective, but they didn't have to do a lot of technology work. And what makes us excited about that is it's always hard, as much as slides and you want to talk about it, to explain to someone how different your technology really is, the best way is for them to experience it. So just to get our foot in the door and now have them processing real volume on our platform and seeing how different that is than maybe what they use for the rest of their business. That's probably more of an incumbent platform. They can start to see the difference, and we think that only plays in our favor over time.
Connor Allen
AnalystsYes. The foot in the door reminded me because I think you do tokenization for some large financial institutions. It's similar, right, where you can get in and show your capabilities and then land and expand?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesThat's right. And this is sort of, I would say, the next step because now we're actually doing processing as opposed to just the tokenization.
Connor Allen
AnalystsAnd something more innovative kind of customer-centric?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesYes.
Connor Allen
AnalystsExciting. And it sounds like there's -- the way you speak about it, it sounds like this isn't a one-off, like there's a possibility to kind of expand this across?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesThat's right. They've done this for a certain portion of their business, and assuming success, which, of course, I think both sides are assuming then, yes, they have more surface area essentially to do something similar. We've said for a while that we felt either in commercial card or in Buy Now, Pay Later, the 2 areas where we're particularly strong and differentiated and also where the banks maybe are coming more under pressure are probably the areas we'll break in and that -- sure enough, that Buy Now, Pay Later is the sort of first one.
Connor Allen
AnalystsI don't think we can get through a conversation without talking about Block. Need to talk about it. But it's just over 40% of revenue. Non-Block TPV is growing twice as fast. You've seen -- you've seen Block step down in terms of concentration, but Block's growing fast. So I mean, you're commonly asked, but we'll ask you again, how do you kind of think about the concentration? What -- would you give us an update on there?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesSo they're 42% of our revenue, which is down 2 points from last quarter. And I would say, if you looked at the last 8, 10 quarters, we've sort of been chipping away at it like that. And a lot of that has to do with they're a very big customer of ours, and they still grow fast. So we don't consider it as much of a problem. We understand the concentration draws some concern from investors. But I think every business would love their largest customer to grow fast, and that's what we have. And we think that's a good thing. And even though Block, everyone is talking about Cash App starting to maybe diversify some new issuance, we -- at least as of the end of Q1, we haven't seen any impact of that yet. So it's taking a little longer. We think there'll be a small impact in Q2, and then it will be more impactful in the second half. But for now, they are a little bit behind. And what's also important is that we continue to talk about doing new things together. So it's not as if they're diversifying and they're sort of like we've moved on, all right? We're going in a different direction. It's more standard risk management, which we completely understand. Right now, they essentially only use us for processing across Cash App, Afterpay and Square. So for them to diversify some is the smart decision, but we want to remain their primary partner, process the bulk of their volume. And then because of our -- the breadth of use cases and flexibility and capabilities we have, we constantly talk to them about new things and continue to expand, and that's what we would hope to do. And so I think we would expect that our non-Block business continues to grow. The TPV has been 2x for a while now. So we're -- that helps us chip away at it. But we don't think there's going to be step function changes because we think there's still a lot of growth opportunity with Block.
Connor Allen
AnalystsThe -- for what it's worth, my read of the pace is a sign that what you do is hard, and it's hard to switch, right? There's a certain switching element to it that's challenging to overcome. Maybe you could just speak a little bit more about the concept of diversification? Like you've mentioned, it's important, it's a sensitive topic. And you've talked in the past about how it's not uncommon for large customers to have some duplications. So just remind us kind of that commentary.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesYes. So almost all of our largest customers, if you looked at our top 10, the majority of them have diversified their processing. It started with virtual card. That's the easier one to do. A single-use virtual card is a much easier use case to diversify. And so we saw that first in Buy Now, Pay Later and in some of the expense management use cases where virtual card's involved. And then I would say, in some other use cases, we've also seen it. So it's quite common among our largest customers. But in each of those cases, we've maintained the majority of the business. And with almost every one of those customers, they've also continued to do things with us. So it really is about risk management, which, again, we very much understand. I would say we've also helped many of our customers to diversify their banks. So we have -- many of our largest customers are using more than one bank on our platform. So it's not just processing, they're diversifying. They're looking at the whole value chain and spreading out the business to make sure they can have good continuity. And they can, again, a lot of times, it's to keep people honest. So you have a primary partner to maximize your economics, but you do have a second partner to keep your primary partner honest. And so this is something that we believe is common. We were the first mover. So in this case, we probably -- we haven't -- we're a net -- this is -- we're not a net beneficiary because we were the first mover. So we had most of the business. But I would say, as you think about what's coming in the future, where as we move more into enterprise and ultimately into banks, then the script will be reversed, right? And then now we will be the challenger and not the incumbent. And if people want to look to diversify, then we'll be happy again to get our foot in the door and show what we can do and grow from there.
Connor Allen
AnalystsI wanted to ask a related topic on competition. So we've seen modern processors invest in issuer processing. Patti is familiar with one, among others. And then we've seen Visa obviously invest in the space. Have you seen an impact in RFPs? What would you say on...
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesNot really. I would say, overall, the competitive intensity is the same. The types of businesses or competitors we see now versus, say, 2 or 3 years ago might be a little different in terms of who we see more frequently. So some have risen up and are stronger, some maybe are struggling more. But overall, I would say the competition is relatively steady. We also have a unique proposition where most of our competitors only do some segment of the market. So they only do debit or they only do commercial or they only do neobanking or they really only are expense management player. They only do virtual card, right? That's sort of how most of our competitors are. We're the only platform that sort of does it all. So in some ways, each -- from deal to deal, we tend to see different people because we can respond in almost any setting versus many of our competitors are a little more narrow than we are. And we think that's what gives us an advantage is, again, as we start talking to enterprises, then it's easy for us to talk about. If we start thinking on a 3- or 5-year plan, you're probably going to want credit and debit. You might -- if you're a 2-sided platform, you might have commercial and consumer. You might want to do embedded, sort of, expense management bank your SMBs on your platform, but you also might want to do a traditional co-brand debit or credit card to consumers. And you could do all of that on our platform, and we could give you that scale and help you do it on a multinational basis. So that's where we really feel like is our special sauce is that there really isn't a trade-off to be made. We can do it all, and we think that will serve us well as time goes on.
Connor Allen
AnalystsIt goes back to the theme that you mentioned, which is more products, diversification of products and you have the breadth to support it.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesThat's right.
Connor Allen
AnalystsSo we have under 2 minutes left. I thought we'd wrap up with something that you and I have talked about before, which is kind of the merchant versus the issuer side of payments. You've seen both.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesI have.
Connor Allen
AnalystsAnd we've seen the merchant side modernize over many years. Catch us up on where you think kind of the issuer side is. Like how much opportunity is left to kind of modernize that side of payments? What do you think is left?
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesYes, there's still so much opportunity. I think the modernization started on the acquiring side. It was really driven by e-commerce and then how that bled into omnicommerce and that created a need for more technology. But I'd say on the acquiring side, it's more like there are almost-events. It's not as much of an evolution. It's like there are revolutions, but they come every 10, 15, 20 years. Issuing inherently is different because it's on the cardholder. So it's the value proposition of the card, which means it's constantly changing. The competitive dynamics in the market are constantly evolving, which means it's just a much more competitive space that requires constant adjustment for those products to evolve. And that also means there's a lot more work. All the regulatory burden and everything else also falls on the issuing side. So as I kind of mentioned earlier, I think what an exciting development is that, again, the fintech winners really showed what was possible, right? They've really demonstrated it. And again, several of them, which are on our platform, have become very big businesses. So now there's no kind of disputing that it's a real opportunity, and they're winning. And they're taking share from others. Some are growing the pie, but I would say, for the most part, they are taking share. And that is waking up the rest of the market. And so I think we're still in the very early days, right, of -- because expense management, for example, like, more, like, embedded platform software businesses are looking at, okay, should that be kind of integrated into my offering. Buy Now, Pay Later, I think it's going to be on more and more debit propositions, not just the Buy Now, Pay Later companies doing it, but lots of businesses having that as a feature of a debit product. And I think SMB is another area where we might start to see more transaction-based lending. So I think it's still early days. It's -- which is what's exciting for us. There's so much opportunity to go get. And it's just a matter of how fast the market can move and how quickly we can meet those opportunities.
Connor Allen
AnalystsExcited to see you attack it. Mike, thank you. Patti, Sarah. Maria, thank you all.
Mike Milotich
ExecutivesThanks so much, Connor. Thanks.
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