Marqeta is typical of the small to mid-size companies that make up the bulk of McLaughlin’s clients. By comparison, Wall Street firms including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have taken advisory roles in recent multi-billion dollar fintech deals, such as Fiserv Inc.’s acquisition of First Data Corp. and Fidelity National Information Services Inc. buying Worldpay Inc.

“FT Partners has no interest in working on the mega $20 billion-plus transactions,” McLaughlin said. “We’re small, nimble, specialized.”

‘Eye-Popping’
Still, the firm has been involved in some high-profile mergers. It advised Heartland Payments Systems on its $4.5 billion acquisition by Global Payments Inc. in 2016, and guided Mercury Payment Systems two years earlier when it was bought by Vantiv Inc.

FT Partners also worked with GreenSky Inc. on its 2018 initial public offering and advised software firm Cayan when it was acquired by Total System Services for about $1 billion last year.

In September, FT Partners advised Assurance IQ, a three-year-old startup with no venture capital funding, on selling itself to Prudential Financial Inc. Fintech investor Sheel Mohnot described the deal, which could be worth as much as $3.5 billion if certain targets are met, as “eye-popping.”

“Assurance is a company that people didn’t even know existed, even people in our world,” said Mohnot, who has founded two fintech startups.

‘Small, Unknown’
FT Partners grew slowly because it was hard in the beginning to attract talent to “a very small, unknown company,” said McLaughlin, who was the firm’s only managing director for its first decade. They’ve since added a number of senior bankers, including Mohit Agnihotri, who joined in June after serving as global head of payments at JPMorgan.

Despite the rapid expansion, McLaughlin said he’s still involved to some degree in every transaction. Over the years, he’s attracted a number of important players in the industry, creating a steady stream of business. The firm hasn’t had to solicit clients for more than a decade, he said.

“We get hundreds of calls from fintech companies a month and we only take on one or two or three,” he said.

Investment banks have approached McLaughlin about taking FT Partners public or buying the company, but he said he’s not interested. Instead, he plans to take a page from Goldman’s book.