Abstract For the approximation of solutions for stochastic partial differential equations, numerical methods that obtain a high order of convergence and at the same time involve reasonable computational cost are of particular interest. We therefore propose a new numerical method of exponential stochastic Runge–Kutta type that allows for convergence with a temporal order of up to $\frac{3}/{2}$ and that can be combined with several spatial discretizations. The developed family of derivative-free schemes is tailored to stochastic partial differential equations of Nemytskii-type, i.e., with pointwise multiplicative noise operators. We prove the strong convergence of these schemes in the root mean-square sense and present some numerical examples that reveal the theoretical results.