Total processing volumes of $91 billion were up 29% from a year ago. Net revenues gathered 20% year-on-year to $150 million. Shares were up 17% in after-hours trading.

Mike Milotich, interim CEO and CFO of Marqeta, said on the call with analysts that “one area of strength has been our continued broadening of lending and buy now pay later use cases … In the early days of our company, we were well ahead of other providers in connecting BNPL providers with retailers via instant issuance virtual cards, enabling seamless payment experiences without costly back-end integrations. While others eventually caught up on instant issuance, we continued to leap ahead, enabling BNPL providers with pay anywhere card solutions.”

BNPL and Flexible Credentials

Recent initiatives have included the launch of Visa flexible credentials, where Marqeta has been the first issuer processor to bring that functionality to the U.S. BNPL firm Klarna has also expanded its efforts with Marqeta, Milotich said, where the launch of the Klarna One Card has marked a move by the BNPL provider from three programs to 10.

“In the second half of this year, we will continue to innovate in BNPL,” Milotich told analysts, as “we have been building a new capability that leverages our issuing expertise and BNPL relationships to capitalize on evolving industry trends. This capability embeds within apps and allows consumers to receive multiple BNPL options at purchase while paying with their existing debit card, increasing both distribution and user engagement.”

Several partners are testing the service, eyeing a limited release before the 2025 holiday season and a broader launch next year.

Delving into value-added services, where gross profit more than doubled, according to commentary on the call, there’s been demand for real-time decisioning capability that is “issuer centric” and “allows customers to create rules and controls to manage transaction fraud based on the expansive and diverse underlying transaction information.”

About 40 customers contributing 20% of total processing volumes excluding Block are using real-time decisioning, Milotich said.

“We are actively enhancing this product with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to help evaluate transaction risk in real time during the authorization process,” he told analysts.

Growth in Europe

Banking, lending, BNPL and expense management use cases are each growing over 100% year-over-year in Europe, said Milotich, and growth will be given further tailwind from the TransactPay acquisition that closed at the end of last month.

In Europe, he said, the business combination will “enable us to deliver more program management services for customers operating throughout Europe … [and] position us to support larger customers who are looking to have a single provider for processing, program management and EMI license.”

Overall, he said, “growth within financial services remained steady with last quarter, which means it is now growing a little slower than the overall company. Block growth within this use case remains as expected, and our fast growing non-Block new banking customers continue to grow approximately five times faster than Block.”

Growth in expense management offerings has been more than 30%, Milotich said. Full-year 2025 revenue growth has now been guided to be between 17% to 18%.

Asked on the call about growth in newer areas, Milotich said: “Now that we’ve settled in and … reached a certain level of scale, we can spend a little more time … moving horizontally, if you will,” and building out services around core processing.

“That’s important as we move more and more into embedded finance” with FinTechs that want a holistic solution, he said. “That’s why we’re doing things like building a white-label app.”

The partnership is designed to give Ontop’s workforce and clients an improved way to access and use their earnings, the companies said in a Wednesday (Aug. 6) news release.

“Our mission is to help companies pay their teams anywhere in the world quickly and reliably,” said Thomas McAllister, Ontop’s chief financial services officer. “By partnering with Thredd, we’re investing in the best-in-class technology and infrastructure to ensure our global workforce has more seamless access and use of the funds they earn, no matter where they are. This marks a significant step in our evolution to deliver the modern financial tools and experiences for companies and workers alike.”

According to the release, the collaboration combines Thredd’s scalable global infrastructure with Ontop’s frictionless payroll/borderless payouts offerings, letting contractors and global teams benefit from real-time account controls, streamlined spending and the ability to instantly move funds across multiple currencies and regions.

PYMNTS wrote last month about Thredd’s efforts — in its capacity as an issuer-processor — to help banks and FinTechs embrace agentic artificial intelligence (AI) to pioneer intelligent transaction orchestration.

“This shift aims to redefine how financial institutions issue and manage cards, optimize real-time decisions and combat sophisticated fraud, charting a course toward a more responsive financial ecosystem,” that report said.

But the path toward this intelligent future is not without its obstacles, primarily based around establishing the infrastructure to support widespread AI deployment. Edwin Poot, chief technology officer at Thredd, said those infrastructural demands tend to be underestimated.

“I think what people usually tend to forget is … once this takes off and you’ll deploy agents per transaction, this will require changes to the infrastructure and the ways in which you manage those agents. People can underestimate that,” he said during an interview for the “What’s Next in Payments” series focused on agentic AI.

He went on to say that while there is a lot of focus on specific use cases, the key question remains whether the underlying infrastructure is ready to support potentially thousands (or tens of thousands) of agents running all at once and accessing application programming interfaces (APIs) at speeds faster than human capabilities.

“This intense activity places immense strain on existing APIs and infrastructure, further complicating the need to authenticate and ensure agents are not malicious,” PYMNTS wrote. “Scaling these solutions to a large, business-ready level remains the central challenge for the coming years.”

Visa’s July “Global Travel Insight” report found that households earning more than $200,000 a year (barely 5% of all households) accounted for roughly 1 in every 4 travel dollars spent worldwide last year.

Using anonymized VisaNet card data, the network revealed that London was the top city for well-heeled visitors, per the report.

Emerging-market elites stayed clear of crowded capitals in favor of seasonal or second-tier destinations such as Japan’s Hokkaido, Egypt’s Mersa Matruh and Argentina’s Mendoza. Asia Pacific was the fastest-growing source of high-income globetrotters, with its affluent household base expected to expand 8% annually through 2030, the report said.

Spending patterns underscored the segment’s heft. Affluent cardholders’ cross-border credit outlays averaged three times that of non-affluent travelers in 2024 and six times in Hong Kong, where retail purchases made up more than half of those charges, per the report.

In Australia, domestic luxury tourists, who are defined as spending more than $500 per night, devote one-third of their budgets to food, drink and shopping, the report said.

Loyalty programs matter, as two-thirds of wealthy Americans said airline or hotel points dictate booking decisions. Those planning international trips over the next year intend to spend 38% more than their mass-market counterparts, according to the report.

Affluent travelers “are not just resilient—they are catalytic,” the report said. “…Merchants and issuers that anticipate their evolving preferences — especially in emerging affluent markets — will be best positioned to capture long-term loyalty and unlock outsized economic value.”

Additionally, affluent consumers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and India are the most eager to travel, with more than 80% planning at least one trip in the next 12 months, per the report.

Within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), high-income travelers generated 55% of intra-regional trips, thanks to better air links and easier visas. Meanwhile, Japan climbed to the seventh-most-visited country for wealthy Americans in 2024 from ninth a year earlier, buoyed by demand for immersive cultural experiences, the report said.

PYMNTS’ coverage has tracked similar themes, including Marriott International’s push to court high-spend Chinese tourists via Alibaba’s travel website; American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) seeing multinational customers increase their business travel; and airlines focusing on roomier seats and other perks for wealthier leisure travelers.

The through-line is that travel’s priciest customers are increasingly the sector’s most reliable ones, even when everyone else tightens their belts.