As the move toward virtual financial transactions grows, J.P. Morgan is eliminating plastic from some of its credit cards.
The global financial services company headquartered in New York has joined with Marqeta Inc. to issue virtual cards, the Oakland, California-based digital card-issuing platform announced Tuesday (July 28).
The partnership allows instant issuance of virtual cards into mobile wallets for payment options including Apple Pay or Samsung Pay for J.P. Morgan’s commercial card clients.
“Our card tokenization technology powers instant issuance into mobile wallets and can now be integrated with existing card processing capabilities,” said Marqeta Chief Revenue Officer Omri Dahan in a statement. “This opens up huge new possibilities for companies looking to streamline payments and provide innovative services to their people.”
The function is expected to debut next year and will integrate with J.P. Morgan’s systems.
In addition to J.P. Morgan, Marqeta said it has contracts with on-demand delivery platforms, including Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates and Uber Eats.
Virtual card use is a more than $200 billion market, projected to grow by 20 percent annually through 2021, Marqeta said. The company said more than 1 billion people are expected to make a payment using a mobile wallet in 2020 as consumers and businesses become more comfortable with this new way to pay.
“Marqeta’s push to wallet functionality will add a new dimension to virtual card payments” said John Skinner, head of commercial card at J.P. Morgan, in a statement. “With Marqeta, our virtual cards can be expanded to new use cases like facilitating payments to disaster relief volunteers or for recruitment spend where interview candidates can be issued a card into their mobile wallets for travel expenses.”
In Powering the Digital Shift 2020 this month, PYMNTS reported an increasing number of banks are favoring virtual cards that feed directly into mobile wallets, putting an end to plastic.
“The additional controls and authentication measures that mobile wallets can deliver are crucial for businesses that administer funds to thousands of employees,” said Simon Barker, CEO at Conferma Pay.
The majority of digital wallets, however, are still enabled by traditional plastic cards. But when a mobile wallet acts as the proxy for a card, and a card just represents 16 digits linked to a specific account, PYMNTS asked: Why is a plastic card needed at all?
Work marketplace Upwork earned record revenue in 2024 and attributed its gains in part to artificial intelligence (AI).
In an earnings release and other materials issued Wednesday (Feb. 12), the company highlighted AI innovations it added to its marketplace platform and AI talent the platform connects with its clients.
“We’ve rapidly unlocked demand for AI-related work on our platform,” Upwork President and CEO Hayden Brown said in prepared remarks for the company’s quarterly earnings call.
Upwork reported full-year revenue of $769.3 million, which marked a 12% year-over-year gain and an all-time high, according to the earnings release.
The company achieved this gain during a year in which the broader staffing industry saw a 9% decline in revenue, Brown said in her prepared remarks.
During the year, the gross services volume (GSV) from AI-related work grew 60% and the number of clients engaging in AI-related projects grew 42%.
In addition, in 2024, the hourly earnings of freelancers engaged in AI-related work were 44% higher than those of other freelancers, per the release.
AI has been the fastest growing major category on the Upwork platform for several quarters, with clients seeking talent in prompt engineering, AI integration, generative AI modeling, and data labeling and annotation, according to an investor presentation released Wednesday.
During the Q&A portion of the earnings call, Brown said Upwork has grown and “shape-shifted” to meet the emerging demand for AI talent just as it did in the past, when there was newly created demand for social media managers and mobile developers.
“We are also leveraging AI on our platform to underpin the evolution of predictive and delightful conversational customer experiences,” Brown said in her prepared remarks.
Upwork enhanced its platform in April by adding an AI assistant called Uma that performs tasks like creating tailored proposal drafts for freelancers, evaluating candidates for clients, and scoping projects and designing optimal teams of experts for larger clients, according to the earnings release and the presentation.
The firm also acquired AI-native search-as-a-service company Objective, a move it said allowed Upwork to enhance the search and match performance of its platform, strengthen the company’s AI and machine learning teams, and continue to develop new capabilities for Uma.
“As the AI work tide builds, organizations of all sizes are seeking out more flexible talent models that match their needs for new and emerging skills, with partners who integrate cutting edge AI technology and valued human workers seamlessly and at scale to rapidly deliver on their priorities,” Brown said in her remarks.
“At the same time, professionals across geographies, specialties and industries want digitally powered ways of working that give them easy access to more autonomy, flexibility and earning power.”