Best Egg (marlette)
“Can a fintech consumer lending platform scale to $40B+ in originations on a bank-partnership model and achieve a premium exit to an incumbent bank seeking a direct-to-consumer lending capability?”
Founded2013
HQWilmington, Delaware, USA
Latest roundDebt, 2024
Valuation$800M acquisition price (Barclays, announced October 2025)
IndustryFintech / Lending
The story
Founded in 2013 as Marlette Holdings, Best Egg launched in 2014 as a direct-to-consumer personal loan platform using a bank-partnership (rent-a-charter) model with Cross River Bank. Over the following decade, it expanded from unsecured personal loans into secured home-equity loans and a credit card, growing to $40B+ in facilitated originations. In October 2025 Barclays agreed to acquire Best Egg for $800M, signaling a convergence of the fintech origination model with a regulated bank's balance sheet and charter.
Last 12 months
Product timeline
2013
Marlette Holdings, Inc. founded; began developing the Best Egg consumer lending platform.· lending
2014
Best Egg platform launched, originating personal loans in partnership with Cross River Bank.· lending
2020
Launched a secured personal loan product (home-secured) in partnership with Cross River Bank targeting homeowners.· lending
2021
Announced expansion into a new credit card program; exceeded $14B in facilitated loans to 600,000+ borrowers.· card
2022
Launched the Best Egg Loan Purchase Program for the BancAlliance network of 300+ community banks.· lending
2024
Secured a $500M forward-flow and back-book purchase facility led by Fortress Investment Group.· lending
2025
Barclays PLC announced acquisition of Best Egg, Inc. for $800M; platform had facilitated over $40B in personal loans to 2M+ customers.· acquisition
Regulated entities
4
regulatory licences held by Best Egg (marlette)
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
Same company
Best Egg (marlette) was analysed under more than one name on the same domain, so its stack is split across these dossiers. Each was analysed independently and may name providers the others do not.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in Best Egg (marlette)’s embedded-finance stack
Banking / BaaS
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Sponsor bank
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
6 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.