Plaid was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey in San Francisco. The company builds the infrastructure that connects consumer bank accounts to financial technology applications. If you’ve ever linked a bank account to Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, or a budgeting app, there’s a good chance Plaid handled that connection.
Visa tried to acquire Plaid in 2020 for $5.3 billion, but the deal fell apart in early 2021 after the DOJ filed an antitrust lawsuit. Plaid continued independently and raised additional funding, reaching a valuation around $13.4 billion in 2021.
Plaid’s core product is an API that lets apps access bank account data — balances, transactions, identity verification, and account authentication. It connects with over 12,000 financial institutions in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe. Beyond basic account linking, Plaid has expanded into identity verification, income verification, and fraud detection.
More than 8,000 fintech companies and financial institutions use Plaid. It’s become so embedded in the financial infrastructure that many consumers interact with Plaid regularly without knowing it. The familiar bank-login screen that appears when you connect an account in an app is often Plaid’s interface.
Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in several US cities and internationally, Plaid employs around 1,500 people. The company has navigated regulatory scrutiny around data privacy and bank-access practices, and has worked to give consumers more control over their connected accounts through its Plaid Portal product.
