Building an Open Finance Future: Safe and Reliable Connectivity for All

Connecting financial accounts with applications is critical to being able to benefit from digital financial services. Since 2013, Plaid has focused on bringing secure connectivity to as many consumers as possible, helping our customers build apps and services that anyone can use, no matter where they bank. 

Over the years, Plaid has forged collaborative relationships with financial institutions of varying size and scale that have led to open finance agreements benefitting millions of consumers. 

Bringing Open Finance to North America

Plaid has spent the past decade working with financial institutions to set up an API-based data sharing network that supports consumers’ data rights. In the absence of Open Finance mandates in the U.S. and Canada, adopting APIs required a coordinated industry effort. As a result of industry collaboration and a shared objective to eliminate reliance on screen scraping, we’re proud to share that 75% of connections via Plaid are facilitated by API’s. We’re thrilled to work with many diverse institutions that recognize that their customers want to benefit from digital finance and need to be supported in moving their financial life online. In fact, 8 of the top 10 banks have open finance partnerships with Plaid. 

To that end, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve migrated 100% of our traffic to APIs for financial institutions including (but not limited to):

• Capital One

• JPMorgan Chase

• USAA

• Wells Fargo

In addition to the financial institutions mentioned above, we’ve also signed agreements with other North American Financial institutions, including RBC, Citibank and M&T; we’ll be migrating our traffic to their API’s in the coming months. Our goal is to remove the need to rely on screen scraping in order for consumers to use the apps and services they want, and the momentum across our API integrations will help the industry get there faster.

Core Exchange: Our “One Size Fits All” Solution

Open finance is maturing, but there is more we can do to encourage adoption of APIs. We introduced Core Exchange in 2022 to help community banks, credit unions, fintechs and digital banking platforms plug into Plaid’s network via the Financial Data Exchange (FDX) API specification. We’re proud to provide a solution to organizations of all sizes that can take as little as 24 hours to set up. Today, more than 3,200 institutions and fintechs (including credit unions like Michigan State University Federal Credit Union and TAB Bank, and popular fintechs such as Wise, Chime and Varo) have access to Plaid’s open finance solutions. This means that millions of consumers (their customers) are able to connect their accounts to apps in Plaid’s network via an API integration. Key partnerships in this area include platforms such as Jack Henry, Alkami, Finastra and Q2 – these integrations make it possible for thousands of small banks and credit unions to easily and affordably adopt open banking. 

It’s exciting to see all corners of the  industry come together to embrace open finance and unlock exponential value for consumers as they move their financial lives online. For more information about how you can easily adopt open finance solutions, please visit our website here.