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.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in Best Egg (marlette)’s embedded-finance stack
Banking / BaaS
Cross River Bank
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.