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September 07, 2021

Building an Income verification product for every American

Raj Mehrotra

Reliable income data has the potential to transform financial services

Payroll data has tremendous potential to help people lead healthier financial lives. That’s why we’re making it easier for consumers to prove their income: it can help them do things like buy a car, get approved for a mortgage, qualify for a credit card, or rent an apartment. 

At the same time, we aim to simplify the income and employment verification process for lenders so that they can enhance their underwriting processes with reliable income data.

Since we beta launched Plaid Income back in March, we’ve received great feedback from our early partners. That allowed us to iterate the product and move it closer to our vision: an income verification product that works for everyone, irrespective of how they get paid. 

Plaid Income gives customers access to a complete  income verification solution 

Not everyone gets their income in the form of a paycheck. Many people are self-employed, freelance, or get their income from government programs. To help our customers support everyone, no matter how they get paid, we have deployed three income verification methods: 

  • Payroll Income – connecting payroll or employer accounts.

  • Document Income – uploading a pay stub or W-2

  • Bank Income – connecting bank accounts

These three methods combined provide a full range of coverage,  no matter how consumers get paid. Customers can leverage any of these income verification methods in a waterfall or as a way to give consumers options.


Learn more about what Plaid Income can do for your business

We’ve been working closely with customers to make sure Plaid Income addresses the needs of every customer irrespective of their use case. We have learned that Plaid Income has significantly improved the user experience and ushered in new possibilities for our customers. A few things we’ve learned are:

  • Income speeds up onboarding flows: Many early customers have replaced a manual and/or expensive income verification system with Plaid Income; as a result, they have significantly sped up their onboarding flows and improved the overall user experience. Plaid Income has eliminated a lot of manual review and data entry tasks, allowing customers to focus on core underwriting tasks.

  • Income enables customers to offer services to a broader range of consumers: Some customers were unable to serve consumers from certain segments like gig economy and non-traditional income earners before Plaid Income. These customers have been able to leverage our robust payroll integrations to serve a diverse set of consumers that were previously inaccessible to them.

  • Plaid unlocks access to reliable income verification data: Our customers have varying data needs. Reliable income data is needed to power multiple use cases including: mortgage, personal, student, auto lending and more. Customers have been able to rely on Plaid for the structured source data they need to reliably verify consumer's income through Plaid. 


Request access

Plaid Income is a great fit for many use cases, including: mortgage, personal lending, auto lending, property management, and more. Whether you’re a developer or a financial institution looking to improve your underwriting processes, we’re here to help.

Learn more and sign up for the Plaid Income beta program by visiting our Income page.