Plaid Account Terms
Effective Date: September 28, 2026
Background. Thanks for using Plaid! Plaid helps consumers like you connect your financial accounts to Plaid, enabling Plaid to provide you with services that you request, and to third-party applications that use Plaid (“Third-Party Apps”). You can save your financial account and identity information in an account directly with Plaid (“Plaid Account”). Your Plaid Account unlocks Plaid’s consumer services, as described further below.
Additional Terms. These Plaid Account terms (“Plaid Account Terms”) supplement and incorporate by reference the End User Services Agreement (US), and together form an agreement between you and Plaid (the “Agreement”). Please review all terms in the End User Services Agreement (US), including in particular the Sections titled Rights to the Platform, Our Disclaimers, Liabilities for our Platform, Dispute Resolution, and Notices. Plaid may modify the Agreement upon notice to you, as detailed in the last paragraph of the End User Services Agreement (US), and acceptance of these modifications will be required to continue using your Plaid Account.
General. Plaid allows you to save your financial account and identity information in an account with Plaid (“Plaid Account”). This enables Plaid to provide you with a range of services, including allowing you to more easily access and manage your financial data and account connections, enable streamlined access to and onboarding onto Third-Party Apps, enable faster identity verification, receive bank account monitoring and security alerts, and create cashflow-based insights to enable broader access to credit and other services. Note that a Plaid Account is not a transaction or asset account for purposes of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, does not store funds, and does not provide you with a means to initiate electronic fund transfers or other payments, but instead enables the Plaid Account services described in these terms.
Streamlined Access and Onboarding. Your Plaid Account allows you to provide your identity information and share your financial data with Third-Party Apps and Plaid more quickly and easily. This helps us accurately recognize you when you return to another Third-Party App and help you complete faster identity verification and financial account linking without you having to re-enter all of the information, allowing you to access and onboard onto Third-Party Apps in a streamlined fashion.
Bank Account Monitoring.
Plaid also offers bank account monitoring and alerts as part of your Plaid Account.
Alerts. You can set up your Plaid Account to monitor the financial accounts saved in your Plaid Account and to send you notifications and alerts related to your accounts, including regarding: suspicious or unusual activity, unusual transactions, identity mismatches among saved accounts, and the status of your financial account connections to Third-Party Apps. During Plaid’s account linking process, you can enroll in these monitoring and alert services. If you choose to enroll, you agree to receive such notifications and alerts from Plaid, including via email. If eligible, you may choose to also set up monitoring and alerting services through Plaid’s web application (“Plaid Web-App”), available at account.plaid.com.
Monitoring Limitations. While Plaid implements measures designed to detect suspicious or unusual account activity such as unusual transactions or connections to Third-Party Apps, no monitoring service can guarantee detection of all such activity. You remain responsible for regularly reviewing your financial account statements and identity information and promptly reporting any unauthorized transactions or activity to your financial institution or other applicable entity. Plaid’s services supplement, but do not replace, your own review and the security measures provided by your financial institutions and other entities providing you their service.
Plaid CRA Consumer Reporting Services. Your Plaid Account also offers services that allow you to share consumer reports about your credit and financial information (including transaction history, account balances, and identity data) with companies that have a permissible purpose under the FCRA to receive them (“Consumer Report Users”). These reports may include credit scores, income insights, and other cash flow attributes, and may be used to support a range of eligibility decisions about you, including for credit, housing, and other purposes permitted under applicable law. These services are provided by Plaid Consumer Reporting Agency, Inc. (dba Plaid Check) (“Plaid CRA”), a consumer reporting agency and a subsidiary of Plaid Inc., and are governed by additional terms set forth in Plaid CRA’s Consumer Services Agreement and Privacy Policy.
How Your Plaid Account Works. You can choose to create a Plaid Account when you use Plaid in connection with Third-Party Apps or on the Plaid Web-App. By creating a Plaid Account, you authorize Plaid to collect, retain, and use your information, including identity and financial account information, in accordance with the Agreement and Plaid’s End User Privacy Policy, including to provide you with the Plaid Account services described in these Plaid Account Terms. Depending on the specific service provided by your Plaid Account, this information may include account and routing numbers, identity and contact information, transaction history, account balances, device and IP information, documentary identification, and photos, images, or scans of your face for identity verification.
As part of enabling Plaid Account services for you, Plaid may: (a) directly receive and manage your financial account and identity information from your financial institution for the financial accounts you save in your Plaid Account; (b) share with Third-Party Apps that you use, our subsidiaries, and our service providers any information required to provide the product or service you have requested; (c) share with Third-Party Apps that you use, our subsidiaries, and our service providers information about whether or not you have a Plaid Account, and, if you do, certain information from your Plaid Account in order for us and them to provide services to you, including, but not limited to: (i) the number and types of financial accounts and Third-Party App connections saved in your Plaid Account, (ii) types of saved identity data and documents in your Plaid Account, and (iii) the services and use cases that Third-Party Apps provide to you that can be supported by the financial accounts and identity data saved in your Plaid Account, and (iv) fraud risk and security indicators derived from your Plaid Account data; (d) contact you using information that you provide or that is available in your saved identity data or financial accounts, including to send security notifications, monitoring alerts, and other communications related to your Plaid Account services; (e) verify your data to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud, misrepresentation, unauthorized or suspicious activity, claims, or other liability, or other malicious behavior – data we receive from this verification process, including data that is potentially considered biometric data in your jurisdiction, may be stored in your Plaid Account; and (f) use the financial account and identity information in your Plaid Account, including any information received from such verification process, to provide Plaid Account services, including to enable streamlined onboarding when you return to share identity data with other Third-Party Apps or when otherwise providing Plaid Account services such as bank account monitoring.
For more information about Plaid’s collection, use, and sharing of personal information about you, including in connection with your Plaid Account, please review Plaid’s End User Privacy Policy. The Agreement and Plaid’s End User Privacy Policy do not cover what the Third-Party Apps that you use do with your information. You should review the privacy policies and terms of service for those Third-Party Apps for information about their practices.
Managing and Deleting Your Plaid Account. You can view and manage your Plaid Account using the Plaid Web-App, using Plaid Portal at my.plaid.com, or by contacting privacy@plaid.com. If you would like to delete your Plaid Account or have any questions about managing your Plaid Account or regarding your data rights, please contact privacy@plaid.com. For more information about Plaid’s retention and deletion practices, please review Plaid’s End User Privacy Policy.
Your Use and Restrictions. You may only use your Plaid Account and the Plaid Web-App to receive services from Plaid, including receiving bank account monitoring alerts, enabling streamlined access to and onboarding onto your Third-Party Apps, and receiving credit-related insights and services. By creating or using a Plaid Account, you expressly agree to the Agreement and that: (a) all data you provide and all financial accounts you connect are your own or that you are an authorized user of those accounts; (b) all data you provide to verify your identity is complete and accurate; and (c) you will not (i) use or access anyone else’s Plaid Account or related data, (ii) use any Plaid Account or related data for any fraudulent, illegal or misleading purpose, (iii) modify, reverse engineer or seek to gain unauthorized access to any Plaid Account or related Plaid systems, (iv) bypass or circumvent measures designed to prevent or limit access to any part of any Plaid Account or related Plaid systems, (v) copy, modify or create derivative works of any Plaid Account or related Plaid systems in any manner not authorized by Plaid, (vi) access any Plaid Account or related Plaid systems for competitive purposes or publish any benchmark or performance information, or (vii) use any Plaid Account or related Plaid systems in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the functioning thereof or interfere with, disrupt, or negatively affect other users.
You acknowledge and understand that you are responsible for the data that you save in your Plaid Account. You will not provide any data that is: (i) defamatory, abusive, harassing, threatening, or an invasion of a right or the privacy of another person; (ii) bigoted, hateful, or racially or otherwise offensive; (iii) violent, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, or otherwise sexually explicit; (iv) trademarked or copyrighted content, or content that otherwise infringes on the intellectual property rights of another individual or company; or (v) otherwise harmful or can be reasonably expected to be harmful to any person or entity. Any unauthorized use of a Plaid Account is strictly prohibited and may result in deletion of your Plaid Account.
Wireless Device and SMS Terms. You agree to notify us promptly if you change or relinquish your phone number, as your phone number helps verify your identity and protect your Plaid Account from unauthorized access. Plaid may send you Short Message Service (SMS) messages in order to provide a service to you and/or to confirm your identity by way of two-factor authentication. You consent to receive automated SMS messages from Plaid, and any of our SMS-related service providers, including through the use of an automatic telephone dialing system, at the telephone number you have provided. Message and data rates may apply. As a general matter, you will receive one message per request. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
You authorize your wireless carrier to use or disclose information about your account and your wireless device, if available, to Plaid or our service provider for the duration of your business relationship, solely to help Plaid or our service provider identify you or your wireless device and to prevent fraud. Please see our End User Privacy Policy to see how we treat your data.
The information your wireless carrier may disclose may include mobile number, name, address, email, network status, customer type, customer role, billing type, and mobile device identifiers (IMSI and IMEI). No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent information will not be shared with any third parties.
If you do not wish to receive SMS messages from Plaid or our service providers, or if you no longer want your wireless operator to share information about you with Plaid or our service providers, you agree to reply STOP to any SMS message from Plaid or sent on behalf of Plaid in order to opt out of the SMS message notifications. You may receive an additional SMS message confirming your decision to opt out. After opting out of SMS messages, you will no longer receive messages from Plaid or our service providers unless you subsequently request SMS messages from us or sign up for any of our services, such as a Plaid Account, that require sending you SMS messages.
If you are experiencing issues with the SMS messages from Plaid or our service providers, you can reply with the keyword HELP for more assistance, or you can contact login+sms@plaid.com.
Email Notifications. In addition to SMS messages, Plaid may send you email notifications as part of your Plaid Account services, including bank account monitoring alerts, security notifications, and other communications related to your Plaid Account. You consent to receive such email notifications at the email address associated with your Plaid Account. You may manage your email notification preferences by contacting privacy@plaid.com, or if eligible and enrolled, through the Plaid Web-App. If you do not wish to receive monitoring alert emails from Plaid, you may opt out of such emails; however, opting out of monitoring alert emails does not deactivate your Plaid Account or other Plaid Account services.
Persons under the age of 18 may not create a Plaid Account. By creating and using your Plaid Account or using the Plaid Web-App, you represent and warrant that you are 18 years old or older. If you have reason to believe that a person under 18 years of age is using our Services, please contact us at privacy@plaid.com and, upon confirmation, we will delete the relevant Plaid Account, subject to and in compliance with our requirements under applicable law.
Security. Plaid implements technical and organizational measures designed to safeguard your Plaid Account from unauthorized access, use, alteration, or disclosure and to maintain the security, confidentiality, and integrity of your data. However, we encourage you to take responsibility for securing your Plaid Account and other personal information, knowing that you provide it at your own risk. You should also be aware that while Plaid’s monitoring services are designed to help detect suspicious activity, they do not replace the security measures provided by your financial institutions and Third-Party Apps, and you should continue to follow their recommendations where applicable for the security, confidentiality, and integrity of your data and accounts. If you believe your Plaid Account has been compromised, please contact us immediately at privacy@plaid.com.
Miscellaneous. Any capitalized terms used but not defined in these Plaid Account Terms will have the meanings ascribed to them in the End User Services Agreement (US). In the event of a conflict between these Plaid Account Terms and the End User Services Agreement (US), these Plaid Account Terms will control and prevail as applicable to your use of a Plaid Account; provided that all other provisions of the End User Services Agreement (US) will remain in full force and effect. By accepting the Agreement, including these Plaid Account Terms, or by creating, accessing, managing, or using your Plaid Account, you agree to the Agreement and certify that you have all the necessary rights to do so. If you do not agree to the Agreement, please do not create, access, manage, or use a Plaid Account. If, at any time, you no longer agree to the Agreement, you may delete your Plaid Account. Plaid, in our sole discretion, may disable or delete a Plaid Account if (a) we suspect any violation of any of the terms contained in the Agreement, (b) your Plaid Account is unused and remains inactive for an extended period of time, (c) we suspect any unauthorized use of your Plaid Account, or (d) we are legally obligated to do so. Plaid reserves the right to seek all other available remedies, in law or in equity, in connection with any such issue.