Enabling Global, Real-Time Employee Benefits: How Emerline Powered Espresa’s LSA Platform with Marqeta

We moved Espresa from a pre-funded or post-paid model to a $0 balance, real-time-funded model. This model, powered by Marqeta's Just-in-Time (JIT) Funding, was the key to solving the core financial and administrative challenges.

• $0 card balance: Every virtual and physical card issued maintains a zero balance by default. This single feature instantly mitigates all fraud risk from lost or stolen cards and eliminates the need to "pre-load" thousands of employee accounts with company funds.
• Real-time funding decision: At the exact moment an employee attempts a purchase, the Marqeta platform sends a JIT Funding request to our custom-built Gateway.
• Instantaneous, precise fund transfer: Our Gateway consults the LSA rules engine. If the transaction is approved (e.g., "Yes, this is an approved gym for this user"), our Gateway responds with an 'Approve' message. Marqeta then instantly moves the exact transaction amount (e.g., $59.99) from Espresa's central program funding source to the card and approves the transaction. The employee's experience is a seamless, sub-2-second approval at the point of sale.
• Optimized corporate cash flow: This JIT-funding model provides superior cash flow management for Espresa's clients. Funds are only drawn from their program account at the precise moment a valid, policy-compliant purchase is made, eliminating the need to tie up capital in-seasoning or pre-funding.

To provide ultimate flexibility and security, we designed a "layered defense" model for authorization. This combines Marqeta's powerful, native controls with our custom, application-level intelligence.

• Layer 1: Marqeta dynamic spend controls. We use Marqeta's platform-level controls as the first line of defense. These are set at the card product level to create a broad control layer that blocks entire categories of risk (e.g., blocking all transactions at gambling establishments, cash advances, or in sanctioned countries).
• Layer 2: Our gateway JIT logic. All "valid" transactions that pass the first layer are then sent to our Gateway for precise, policy-level adjudication. This is where we enforce the client-specific LSA rules from our rules engine, such as checking the user's available LSA balance for that specific category, validating the specific merchant ID against the client's custom "approved" list, or enforcing complex velocity controls (e.g., "$100 per month, max 1 transaction per day").
• Automated reconciliation via metadata injection. TA cornerstone of our solution for eliminating administrative overhead. When our Gateway approves a transaction, it also injects custom metadata into the transaction record. The final, settled transaction record now includes tags like {"lsa_category": "wellness", "client_id": "acme_corp", "taxable_status": "true"}. This transforms reconciliation from a manual, detective process into a simple, automated report.

Here is the breakdown of the LSA Program Transformation Analysis, comparing the traditional Reimbursement model to the Marqeta-Powered Platform:

Employee funding & delivery

• In the Old Model, employees bore the financial burden by paying for expenses upfront and waiting 2 to 4 weeks for reimbursement via payroll.
• The New Model eliminates this burden entirely. It utilizes Just-In-Time (JIT) funding, allowing the employer to fund the transaction at the exact moment of purchase. This results in instant delivery at the point-of-sale, often integrated directly into a digital wallet.

Verification & policy control

• Under the Old Model, verification was a manual, "reactive" process that happened after the money was already spent. This created a constant risk of unauthorized spending or policy violations.
• The New Model shifts to automated, pre-transaction verification. By using proactive controls, the platform ensures 100% real-time compliance, stopping non-compliant purchases before they occur.

Reconciliation & user experience

• Reconciliation in the Old Model was a tedious, manual task centered around physical or digital receipts. This created a manual, multi-step user experience that was often frustrating for employees.
• The New Model automates this via metadata-driven reconciliation, where transaction data is captured and categorized instantly. The result is a seamless, digital-wallet native experience that removes the administrative friction for both the employee and the employer.

A world-class funding model means nothing if the user experience is poor. A key part of our solution was creating a seamless, digital-first experience using Marqeta's card management and tokenization APIs.

• Instant virtual card issuance: Using Marqeta's Core API, the moment an employee is enrolled in an LSA via the Espresa app, a new virtual card is programmatically created and associated with their user token.
• In-app push provisioning: We eliminated the need for manual card entry. We integrated Marqeta's Digital Wallets Management API to place "Add to Apple Pay" and "Add to Google Pay" buttons directly within the Espresa app. This allows employees to securely push their new, tokenized LSA card to their native digital wallet for immediate, contactless use.
• Full lifecycle management: Our solution provides full, in-app card controls via Marqeta's APIs, including the ability to lock/unlock a card, view card details securely (using Marqeta's UX Toolkit components), and report a card lost, further enhancing the user's sense of control.