‘Plaid’ A Financial Services Company Builds Data Transfer Network That Powers Fintech And Digital Finance Products
| < 1 minute read
Industry: Financial Technology, Financial Services
Founded: May 2013
Key people: Zach Perret (CEO) William Hockey (President & CTO)
Revenue: $200 Million(2019)
Plaid is the technology platform providing the tools and access needed for the development of a fully modern, and digitally-enabled financial system. Plaid makes it easier and safer for developers — from the smallest startups to the largest financial institutions — to build innovative financial services and applications. Plaid offers effective consumer experiences, developer-friendly infrastructure, and intelligence tools that give everyone the ability to build the future of financial services.
Mobile apps now allow consumers to trade stocks and crypto (Robinhood), save money (Acorns and Qapital), and make payments (Venmo)—and most have one thing in common: Plaid. Its technology, a suite of banking APIs, enables developers to connect new digital tools to legacy financial systems. A quarter of Americans with bank accounts now use services powered by Plaid, up from 13% in January 2018. Last year, the company launched Assets to automate asset verification for loan applicants. “We’ve digitized that process so it only takes a couple of minutes,” says co-founder and CEO Zach Perret.
In the coming days, it will be interesting to see how many startups step into this sector because last year Visa announced a $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid. So there are many established companies that are looking to acquire upcoming startups.
Suprotik Sinha is the Content Writer with Synkrama Technologies. He writes about technologies and startups in the global enterprise space. An animal lover, Suprotik, is a postgraduate from Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication (SIMC) Pune. He carries 6+ years of experience in Content Writing, and he also worked in mainstream broadcast media, where he worked as a Journalist with Ibn7 ( now known as News18 India) and Zee Media in Mumbai.