Plaid

Plaid is a San Francisco-based financial data network that lets people connect their bank and financial accounts to the apps and services they choose to use. Founded in 2013, the company works in open finance, where account data is shared with a consumer's permission so that third-party products can check balances, verify accounts or move money without manual entry. Its network covers more than 12,000 financial institutions in 20 countries across the US, Canada, the UK and Europe.

On top of that connectivity, Plaid offers products for bank payments, credit scoring and underwriting based on real-time financial behavior, fraud protection, instant onboarding and personal financial management. It also presents itself as AI infrastructure for financial products. Developers reach these functions through an API, so a single integration can stand in for separate connections to thousands of banks, sparing fintech teams from building and maintaining bank links themselves.

Plaid's customers include thousands of companies such as Venmo, SoFi and Betterment, as well as several Fortune 500 firms and many of the largest banks. The company says more than 9,000 fintechs are built on its platform, that it handles over one million connections a day, and that one in two banked adults in the U.S. use Plaid. Consumers can review and manage which apps have access to their data through Plaid Portal, a control that matters because the model depends on users' consent to share account information.

The company has more than 900 team members across six offices worldwide and describes its mission as making digital finance possible, with the goal of helping people lead healthier financial lives.