Card Processors Add New Rails as Customers Go Global

The card-issuing platforms that grew up alongside, and serving, FinTechs are following their customers into businesses that have little to do with issuing another card.

There is a common commercial calculation across several examples. Once a company is plugged into a customer’s payments operation, card processing is only one place to generate business. At the same time, the card programs running on these platforms are spreading across more countries and moving into commercial credit; buy now, pay later (BNPL); secured credit; and other products.

Lithic provided the latest marker Aug. 13 when it partnered with Monavate. Lithic supplies the processing technology; Monavate supplies regulated issuing, network memberships, BINs and settlement. The combination is intended to reduce the number of separate providers a company needs to assemble to operate a card program.

A week earlier, Lithic announced a program with Lightspark in which Lead Bank issues a Visa card and settlement occurs in USDC. Here again, Lithic remains the processor. The development is in the range of programs and settlement models its processing platform is being used to support.

Marqeta’s expansion shows some of the lengths across which the model can extend from its original issuing base.

The company processed $120 billion in the second quarter, up 32% year over year. Expense management volume grew more than 50%, and lending, including BNPL, rose more than 40%. International volume increased more than 40% and reached 20% of total processing volume.

That growth is coming with a broader set of services.

In May, Marqeta and Banking Circle expanded Marqeta’s account and money movement offering into 30 additional European countries. The arrangement adds multicurrency accounts and European payment rails alongside card issuing, building on the program management capabilities Marqeta gained with its TransactPay acquisition.

The same approach is emerging in commercial payments. Marqeta is adding ACH, real-time payments, push-to-card and wire capabilities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Marqeta CEO Mike Milotich told analysts during the most recent earnings conference call that commercial customers “increasingly want to utilize multiple payment rails through one platform.”

Most B2B payments still happen without a card, leaving businesses to connect with different banks and providers when they need to make other types of payments, Milotich said.

For an issuer processor, that means an expense card or commercial card can be one piece of a much larger payments relationship.

Issuing Goes Global and Upmarket

Geography is another part of the expansion.

Marqeta’s international volume accounted for one-fifth of its TPV in the latest quarter, and disclosures from the company indicated that customers, including Ramp and Sezzle, have been taking programs launched in one market into others. Ramp, for example, has been extending its corporate expense management program into Australia, Japan, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico.

Europe has become a particularly visible example. Marqeta’s European TPV in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone was about 40% higher than its volume for all of 2023.

Embedded finance company Highnote is broadening in yet another example.

The company added U.S. merchant acquiring to its issuing business last year. That put merchant pay-ins on the same platform as card issuing and payouts, supported by a common ledger.

The significance is straightforward. Issuer processing traditionally sits on the side of the transaction where a cardholder spends money. Acquiring brings the platform onto the side where a merchant receives it. Accounts and non-card rails extend the relationship further into where funds are held and how they move.

What is changing is the perimeter of issuer processing. A business that once competed primarily to process debit, credit or virtual card transactions can now compete for the accounts surrounding those cards, payments that never touch the card networks, merchant acceptance, risk services and new forms of settlement. The card is still the entry point. The business being built around it is getting larger.

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