Plaid

Plaid is a technology platform that provides tools and access for digitally enabled and developed financial systems.

Launched in 2013 by William Hockey and Zach Perret in San Francisco, Plaid has built financial services and applications for small start ups to large financial institutions. The company offers consumer experiences, developer-friendly infrastructure and intelligence tools that give clients the ability to create products that solve financial problems. Plaid is focused on democratising financial services through technology.

The company started building the technical infrastructure APIs that connect consumers, traditional financial institutions and developers. They have since evolve further and now add key insights to the data access they provide with their suite of analytic products.

In December 2018, Plaid raised a $250m Series C, led by Index Partners and Kleiner Perkins. Previous investors in the business include Goldman Sachs and Spark Capital. At the time, the company was valued at $2.65bn.

In January 2019 Plaid acquired Quovo, a company focused on investment and brokerage aggregation, for $200m, with the intention to make it easier for developers to build products that incorporate investment and brokerage data. Together, the companies will build a single platform that developers and large companies alike can use to build any financial application—from payments, to lending, to wealth management.

In October 2019, Plaid partnered with rent-alternate company Canopy, to offer open-banking services to the company and widen their geographical reach.

It was announced Plaid was to be acquired by Visa in January 2020 for $5.3bn. The deal fell through a year later due to US DOJ opposition.