The returning user experience

The user starts a Link session.

The returning user experience (formerly known as Remember Me) streamlines onboarding for users who have already connected a financial account with Plaid in the US or Canada. In Link, users can choose to associate their phone number with the accounts they're connecting to a financial app or service. Once users have opted-in to being 'remembered' by Plaid, they'll be able to quickly connect those same accounts to other financial apps and services in the future using a one-time password for thousands of financial institutions, resulting in higher conversion and a simpler user experience.

After the Consent screen in Link, users can input their phone number and verify it using a one-time password sent to their device. Next, the user will proceed to select an institution and connect their account(s). Once account verification is completed, Plaid will associate the institution and accounts with the user's phone number.

This experience is automatically enabled for all eligible customers, and you do not need to make any updates to your integration to support it.

The user starts a Link session.

When users want to connect their saved institutions and accounts to additional Plaid-powered apps or services, Plaid runs security checks to detect that they are a returning user with the same phone number and device.

Users can choose to be remembered by Plaid, making future connections faster and easier. To enroll, the user will enter their phone number in Link. This flow is available for phone numbers with country codes +1 (covering the United States, Canada, and part of the Caribbean), +44 (UK), and +52 (Mexico); users selecting codes from any other country will be redirected to the standard Link flow. The default country shown in the dropdown will be based on the country code(s) provided in the /link/token/create call; for example, if /link/token/create is called with a single country code, that country will be shown as the default; if it is called with multiple countries, including US, the United States will be shown as the default.

Supported institutions that users have previously connected an account from and offer a streamlined experience will be designated by the lightning bolt in the institution selection pane. If an institution does not have a lightning bolt, users will be required to go through the full Link experience to connect their account.

Link sessions can be enabled for a more streamlined user experience when Plaid already knows the user’s phone number. When a user.phone_number is provided via /link/token/create, Plaid will pre-fill the phone number in Link for the user. Only the last 4 digits of the associated phone number are shown in order to preserve user privacy.

The user can then verify their phone number using a one-time password. Plaid will deploy a number of security checks to verify that the phone number belongs to the device before the user can select which saved institution to connect to an app or service. Pre-filling phone numbers can help boost conversion while reducing the number of manual inputs from users.

Passkeys are a secure alternative to passwords and can provide a streamlined account linking experience for thousands of institutions. Plaid will automatically enable passkeys for Link sessions on iOS devices when you use the Plaid iOS SDK 4.3.0+ or React Native 10.2.0+ SDK.

In Link, users will be prompted to enable passkeys with Face or Touch ID before proceeding with connecting their financial accounts to a chosen app or service. When the same user wants to connect to another app or service, they can use their passkey with Face or Touch ID instead of a one-time password for a streamlined authentication experience.

Link the returning user flow can be tested in the Sandbox or Production environments. To enable a Sandbox Link session for testing, use the Link customization name REMEMBER_ME_SANDBOX when creating a Link token.

Real phone numbers do not work in Sandbox. Instead, Sandbox has been seeded with a test user whose phone numbers may be used to trigger different scenarios. To explore each scenario, enter the corresponding phone number and correct OTP. For all scenarios, the correct OTP is 123456.

Returning User: A user who has previously enrolled in the returning user experience by confirming their device and successfully linking an Item.

Link emits events to indicate whether or not users opt-in to being remembered by Plaid:

The following can be found in the view_name field in the TRANSITION_VIEW event for returning user panes:

The match_reason field in the SELECT_INSTITUTION event has the following values for the returning user flow:

Link will emit the ERROR event when the user submits an invalid phone number or an invalid OTP. The error_code will be INVALID_PHONE_NUMBER or INVALID_OTP, respectively.

For more details, see Link SDK documentation. For more information on tracking Link conversion in general, see Improving Link conversion.