December 2: What does Plaid do?
December 2: What does Plaid do?
Plaid acts as an intermediary between apps (like Venmo) and your bank so that you can log in and share data securely.
Source: Justin Gage
Published: January 2021
What does Plaid do?
Plaid acts as an intermediary between apps (like Venmo) and your bank so that you can log in and share data securely.
As more personal finance apps (think Robinhood, Wealthfront, Coinbase) pop up, developers need ways to connect to and access your bank accounts
That connection is notoriously difficult—each bank has its own idiosyncratic APIs, legacy architectures, and ugly UX
Plaid provides a connection layer for developers to easily connect to and work with bank accounts, and a simple UI for users like you to log in
Before Plaid existed, we used micro-deposits to verify bank accounts. Remember when you’d have to enter that $0.02 and $0.07 was deposited into your account? With Plaid, the connection is instantaneous instead of having to wait days.