Plaid CEO Says Exec Running Stripe's Newly Launched Plaid Competitor Interviewed Multiple Employees, Asked Probing Questions 14
Stripe, one of the world's most valuable startup ($95 billion), today launched Financial Connections, which will enable businesses and their customers to safely share their financial data. "Businesses can go directly to Stripe to access a privacy-first authentication flow and our new data API," Jay Shah, Stripe executive running Financial Connections said today. Or in other words, Stripe has launched its Plaid competitor. Following the announcement from Shah, Plaid CEO Zachary Perret tweeted: Wow! Jay, you took interviews with Plaid & asked probing questions multiple times over the past few years, and your team sent repeated RFP's (under NDA!) to us asking for tons of detailed data. I wish y'all the best with these products, but surprising to see the methods.
Re: Rich guys squabbling (Score:2)
Oh goody so 95 billion (Score:2, Funny)
Why should we care? (Score:3)
Basic banking related services (Score:2)
Seems to me that Plaid just offers some basic services related to banking. A lot of that has been kickstarted with PSD2 in Europe and other open banking initiatives that plaid didn't invent and I'm sure it's a lot of work connecting a lot of banks that don't work with standards. However, I don't see why Plaid thinks they own this? Would have been great if banks got together and provided this type of service in a uniform way (like they do with credit card payments). Now you basically have some for profit com
Typical practices (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone that thinks they are definitely going to be bought out when a larger company wants to see their data, even signs an NDA, is naive.
NDA's are worthless if they are planning on competing with you.
Someone approaches you, ask if they are willing to sign a non-compete for 5 years before you show them your current data. If they are still willing, they are interested in buying you.
When they laugh, say "OK, but we WILL be willing to sign one when we try to buy you guys in 5 years."
I had a company try this with me (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time I had a company that made the leading product in its market. (A security product.) Another company that made a complimentary product contacted me wanting to do some integration and such. Great! That's a benefit to customers and a benefit to both companies, to have everything work well together. They asked a lot of questions. Too many, in retrospect.
Shortly after, they launched a competing product.
I tried to reach their CEO but had trouble getting through the front line people answering the darn phones. So I posted publicly that he and I need to talk about IP in their new product. THAT got a response. I explained to him that along with copying the workings, his programmer had also copy-pasted a copyright canary in our source code and I had already contacted an attorney we both knew of. The product was removed from their site a few hours later.
What are they thinking?. (Score:4, Funny)
Stripe has launched its Plaid competitor.
Everyone knows you don't mix stripes and plaids.
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Be wary of giving Plaid access to your accounts (Score:3)
Plaid, which is used by more than 5,500 apps to connect to bank accounts, has been accused of taking too much financial data [theverge.com] from users and using that information to access and sell their transaction history [reuters.com]. A class-action suit alleged that Plaid collected users’ bank account login information through web pages that mimicked “the look and feel of the user’s own bank account login screen.” The company settled the suit for $58 million without admitting wrongdoing, and claimed it was adequately transparent with the user.
From Verge article [theverge.com]If you don’t feel comfortable sharing any information through Plaid, you can wipe all of your linked data through the portal
So, you can't put limits beforehand, only AFTER it's shared and you notice they've gone too far. By then, who knows what they've done with your information.
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From Verge article [theverge.com]If you don’t feel comfortable sharing any information through Plaid, you can wipe all of your linked data through the portal
And if you think that data magically disappears, I have some prime oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you