May 22, 2025
Plaid Link: A decade of innovation in connectivity & conversion
We introduced Plaid Link in 2015 and redefined how people connect to their financial apps and services, helping pave the way for today’s fintech ecosystem.
Now in 2025, Link has been used by more than half of Americans with bank accounts, and Plaid has built a network of 7,000+ companies connecting to 12,000+ banks, credit unions and other financial institutions. The scale of our network uniquely positions Plaid to drive the next ten years of connectivity innovation for our customers and partners and the consumers they serve.
While Plaid has expanded to provide solutions for payments, cash flow lending, consumer onboarding, and anti-fraud, Link remains core to our mission and the starting point for 750,000 connections every day. We’re excited to share how we’re continuing to improve Link across best-in-class conversion, smarter fraud protection, and improved experiences for both consumers and customers.
Continuing to drive best in class conversion
Onboarding is a consumer’s first impression, where every extra second or step can mean the difference between gaining a new customer or losing one. In fact, 76% of consumers prefer apps they can sign up for and access instantly (The Fintech Effect report). That’s why onboarding remains a core focus of Plaid. As more people use Plaid, our network grows, and with it, our ability to deliver a faster, smarter, and more seamless Link experience for everyone:
Millions of consumers have chosen to save their information with Plaid to make future connections faster and easier. When consumers trust us to make future connections faster, everyone benefits. Consumers get a safe and smoother way to connect, and businesses see stronger results. In fact, returning users who’ve opted in convert at rates 11% higher on average.
We’re making the returning user experience even smarter. Features like phone number pre-fill and skip-to-OTP are live. These reduce friction and boost conversion for users who’ve connected with Plaid before. We’re also exploring new options, like allowing users to enroll with an email address for even greater flexibility. For customers that haven’t enabled these features yet, check out our API docs to get started.
We’ve also rolled out several updates that make it easier for users to connect:
Returning users now see one streamlined step for consent and verification. We’ve combined the consent and phone number screens into a single pane with clearer, more intuitive language. This update improves transparency, builds trust, and has already delivered a statistically significant lift in conversion. As of early May, it’s live for all customers using our streamlined returning user experience.
We’ve improved performance throughout the flow. We’ve significantly reduced latency in Link. For example, customers who pre-initialize Link now see load times up to 5x faster, resulting in quicker connections and stronger conversion rates.
Protecting consumers and businesses from fraud
Great onboarding isn’t just about conversion, it’s about trust. Link has built-in security and advanced threat monitoring that automatically detects suspicious behavior. By tapping into the scale of the Plaid Network, which spans thousands of apps and financial institutions, we have unique capabilities to detect and prevent fraud.
Plaid blocked nearly 3 million fraudulent requests last year. We analyze thousands of risk signals in real time, including device IDs, SIM details, and carrier data to help stop bad actors before they reach our customers’ platform and compromise trust.
The Plaid Network grows every day, strengthening our ability to detect and prevent fraud. By analyzing activity across a wide range of apps and services, we gain a broader view that helps us spot compromised accounts more accurately than a single login event ever could. The best part? This continuously improving fraud detection is built into Plaid Link, with no work required for our customers.
We’ve added next-generation authentication methods like passkeys. This lets people sign in without passwords by using built-in security on their devices, making logins faster, easier, and more secure. At the same time, we’re continuously strengthening our machine learning models for authentication to respond to evolving threats in real time.
Deeper insights for customers
Beyond improving Link as a product, we’ve invested in analytics to empower customers to understand conversion performance at a deep level. In mid-June, we’re launching Premium Link Analytics, a new dashboard view designed to provide more actionable visibility into Link performance for customers on Premium Support plans.
Link analytics now supports analyzing across key segments and benchmarks. Link Analytics can now analyze conversion performance by geography, institution, device type, product, and even customizations they’ve made to Link. Customers can also see how their results compare to Plaid-wide benchmarks to identify strengths and opportunities.
Customers can review the detailed funnel step by step. They can go beyond the standard three-step view with insights into key actions like Institution Search and Submit Credentials. The added clarity helps teams pinpoint where users are dropping off, and where to optimize.
Built for what comes next
From day one, Plaid’s focus has been clear: make it safe and easy for people to use their financial account data to enable the apps and services they trust. That focus hasn’t changed, but our scale, impact, and ability to support customers and consumers have grown dramatically.
These improvements to Link are part of a broader commitment to raising the bar for account connectivity — driving higher conversion for our customers, delivering a better experience for the millions of people who rely on Plaid every day, and helping ensure those connections are secure and trustworthy from the start.
We’re proud of how far Link has come. And we’re just getting started. We’ll keep building, testing, and improving, so the entire ecosystem can move forward, together.
Ready to improve your conversion and user experience? Get in touch to learn how to get the most out of Link. Already a Plaid Link customer? Explore the latest Link features in our API docs and start optimizing your onboarding flow today.