Marqeta Announces Karna Crawford as Chief Marketing Officer

Marqeta (NASDAQ: MQ), the global modern card issuing platform, announced today that it had appointed Karna Crawford, a veteran marketing executive who has held leadership roles at J.P. Morgan Chase, Verizon and Ford, as it’s Chief Marketing Officer. Crawford will be a crucial member of Marqeta’s senior leadership team driving the company’s global marketing efforts, including marketing and brand strategy, demand generation, product marketing, and communications.

“Karna matches big picture brand vision with a keen eye for data and understanding how customers and prospects interact with a product,” said Todd Pollak, Chief Revenue Officer at Marqeta. “Marqeta has a big part to play in a major evolution in financial services toward embedded finance, and Karna was a clear choice to help us bring this story to an even bigger stage.”

Marqeta was founded in 2010, and quickly became regarded as the global standard for open platform issuing and processing, bringing much needed innovation to an industry historically dominated by legacy players. The company has empowered some of the world’s most innovative companies to bring game-changing payment card products into the world, and has been recognized in the past as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in the World and on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list.

Crawford, who has held leadership roles at J.P. Morgan Chase, Verizon and Ford, joins Marqeta at a time of increasing demand and scale for its platform and solutions. The company processed more than $160 billion in total payments volume in 2022, representing more than 80x growth since 2017. Marqeta’s modern card issuing platform has more than 370 API endpoints and with the acquisition of Power Finance in January 2023 is now set up to power consumer and commercial debit, prepaid and credit programs.

“Marqeta has the solutions to fuel the embedded finance rocketship, and from my first conversations with leadership I knew that the opportunity to tell this story was huge,” said Karna Crawford, Marqeta CMO. “Working for some of the most iconic brands in the world, I’ve been able to leverage data, technology and insights to deliver hyper targeted marketing that drives growth and builds brands that connect with wider audiences. I’m looking forward to driving the Marqeta story forward as the company enters into a new chapter of its growth.”