What differentiates Apto from other issuers like Marqeta in the crowded market?

Back to what motivated us to start Apto and what motivates our team today, it’s not only an empowerment story, but it's an equal access and lowering of the barrier of entry and inclusion story. Right now, especially in issuance, there's a huge hurdle of paying to play. Using a poker analogy, the blinds are just so expensive. In an environment where we want more customers to experiment and try new things and see if a card program makes sense for their company, the last thing these companies want to do is sign up for a three, four or five-year commitment with monthly minimums, and additional X, Y, and Z requirements. These factors disincentivize experimentation.

We want to make it easy for companies to try and experiment – we needed to make sure that there would be no hurdle to signing up on our website. Come to our website, sign up, cut your own sandbox keys, and have a look. Build, test, move to production, issue cards, and pay as you go. Other companies talk about instant issuance or self-service, other companies talk about being developer-first, but we are the only platform where customers can literally, over a holiday weekend, launch a card program without talking to us.