Fintech-payment efforts gain steam

The digital card-issuing giant Marqeta is expanding its offerings to include customizable banking services for nonbanks.

The Oakland, California, company on Monday announced Marqeta for Banking, enabling any company to offer customers checking accounts, automated clearing house payments, bill payment and instant funding through a new set of application programming interfaces.

Marqeta will offer a total of seven new banking services initially through partnerships with Pathward (formerly MetaBank) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Sutton Bank in Attica, Ohio. Companies interested in combining banking and card issuing for white-label and other solutions are the target audience, it said.

"As the digital transformation of financial services accelerates, our customers are leading the way by designing personalized user experiences that appeal to a new generation of consumers," Jason Gardner, Marqeta's founder and CEO, said in a press release. Marqeta recently announced it's seeking a new CEO as Gardner prepares to step down from day-to-day duties more than a decade after launching Marqeta.

Separately, Cross River Bank on Monday announced a collaboration with American Express enabling the New Jersey bank to issue Amex-branded credit cards on behalf of fintechs.

The move expands Cross River's growing array of card network options through its banking-as-a-service channel. It also highlights Amex's growing effort to reach new audiences via fintechs.

Amex last week emerged as the cobrand partner for the San Francisco-based fintech Cardless' new card targeting mall shoppers issued by First Electronic Bank in Salt Lake City, Utah. Earlier this year Amex announced a partnership to offer fintechs credit cards through WebBank. Amex also has a partnership with the digital card issuer i2c, which led to the rollout of the Abra Crypto Card, providing cryptocurrency rewards for purchases in U.S. dollars.

Also on Monday, Discover Financial Services announced the results of a study conducted on behalf of Discover Global Network suggesting that more than half of fintechs want to partner with payment networks.

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In addition, 78% of fintechs said the open banking movement is relevant to their business and 60% of fintechs favor offering cryptocurrency solutions through a payment network, according to a press release. The study was conducted among executives at 852 fintechs in the U.S., Asia, Germany and the U.K. this summer.