--- title: 'Plaid — company profile' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/companies/plaid' type: 'company' updated: '2026-07-02' --- # Plaid > Plaid provides the data network and APIs that let apps securely connect to users' bank accounts. - **Website:** https://plaid.com/ - **Type:** Private (VC-backed) - **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded:** 2013 - **Founders:** Zach Perret, William Hockey - **Valuation:** $8B - **Total raised:** ~$1.3B - **Latest round:** Tender offer · $8B valuation · Feb 2026 - **Investors:** Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, BlackRock, NEA, Ribbit Capital, Spark Capital, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Goldman Sachs, Citi Ventures, JP Morgan - **Business model:** Developer-priced B2B API platform (usage-based). Free for consumers; developers pay per connected account or per API call. - **Industries:** Payments - **Open roles:** 107 - **Profile:** https://feeny.ai/companies/plaid ## What they do Plaid runs the data network and APIs that let apps securely connect to users' bank accounts. Developers use it to link accounts, pull transactions and balances, verify income and identity, screen for fraud, and move money over ACH, RTP, and FedNow across roughly 12,000 financial institutions. ## Overview **The plumbing behind the apps you actually use to move money** Open Venmo, SoFi, Robinhood, or Chime and there is a decent chance Plaid is doing the quiet work underneath: the moment where you pick your bank, log in, and the app suddenly knows your balance. Founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey, Plaid built the connective layer between roughly 12,000 financial institutions and the 9,000-plus fintech apps built on top of it, and it now touches about 1 in 2 US banked adults. The last few years have been a whipsaw. Visa tried to buy Plaid for $5.3 billion in 2020, the DOJ sued to block it as a "killer acquisition," and the deal died in early 2021. Plaid then raised at a $13.4 billion valuation later that year, watched that mark reset hard to $6.1 billion in 2025, and clawed back to $8 billion in a February 2026 tender. The story now is less about account linking and more about whether Plaid can become the financial data backbone for the wave of AI apps, which already make up about a fifth of its new customers. ## What They Do **One API for the messiest data in finance** Plaid sells a network, not just a widget. Its Link component lets a user connect a bank account to an app in a few taps, and behind that connection sits a catalog of APIs that verify account and routing numbers, pull categorized transactions, confirm balances in real time, check income, and move money over ACH, RTP, and FedNow. The pitch to developers is simple: you build the experience, Plaid handles the ugly work of talking to 12,000 banks that all speak slightly different dialects. The reach is the moat. Coverage spans the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe across 20 countries, with more than a million new connections firing every day. ## Problems **Banks were never built to share their data cleanly** Every fintech faces the same wall on day one: getting a user's bank data out of the bank, reliably, without asking them to screen-scrape their own login. Coverage is fragmented, connections break, and fraud and identity checks bolt on awkwardly. Plaid's job is to make that first messy step feel like one click, then keep the pipe healthy so the app does not silently lose data. Beyond linking, the products chase the expensive downstream problems: cutting ACH returns and NSF losses with risk scoring, verifying income and cash flow for lending decisions, and screening for AML and fraud so a fintech can onboard users without inheriting a compliance nightmare. ### Problems addressed - Connecting an app to a user's bank account in one click across thousands of fragmented institutions - Verifying account and routing numbers to fund accounts and move money - Reducing ACH returns and NSF losses with risk scoring - Verifying income and cash flow for faster, more accurate lending decisions - Screening for fraud, AML, and identity during onboarding - Giving consumers visibility and control over the financial data they share ## Who It's For **Built for the developer shipping a money feature by Friday** The core buyer is a developer or product team at a fintech, digital bank, lender, or any company that suddenly needs to touch a bank account. That ranges from a two-person startup wiring up its first payment to Fortune 500 names and large banks that need Plaid's coverage and compliance posture. Consumers sit on the other side of the connection, and for them Plaid is free. The newer, faster-growing persona is the AI company. Plaid is openly pitching itself as the trust and data layer for agentic commerce, the place an AI assistant goes to safely read a user's finances or authorize a payment on their behalf. ### Ideal customer profiles - **Fintech developer** — Need bank connectivity fast without screen-scraping; Want one API instead of 12,000 bank integrations; Need to ship a money feature reliably - **Lending / credit team** — Verify income and cash flow in real time; Underwrite with richer bank data; Cut manual document collection - **Fraud & compliance team** — Screen for AML and PEP risk; Verify identity at onboarding; Predict and prevent ACH returns - **AI product builder** — Give agents safe, permissioned access to financial data; Authorize payments on a user's behalf with a trust layer ## Products **A stack that starts at a bank login and ends at a payment** Plaid is organized as a menu of modular products that stand alone but get stronger together. It groups them into payments, fraud and risk, financial management, lending, open finance, and onboarding, so a customer can start with a single account-linking call and expand into money movement, underwriting, or identity verification without leaving the network. ## Business Model **Free for consumers, usage-priced for the builders** Plaid makes money from developers, never the end user, and consumers connect their accounts at no cost. The pricing splits three ways depending on the product: a one-time fee per connected account, a monthly subscription per connected account, or a flat per-request charge for every successful API call. The published plans run from Pay as You Go for individuals and small teams, to a discounted Growth tier on a 12-month commitment, to Custom deals with volume pricing for larger and regulated buyers. A free sandbox and a limited production tier of up to 200 live API calls let developers test before they pay. ### Plans Plaid charges developers, never consumers, and prices by product in one of three ways: a one-time fee per connected account, a monthly subscription per connected account, or a flat per-request fee for each successful API call. Published plans scale from month-to-month Pay as You Go to a discounted Growth tier on a 12-month commitment to fully custom enterprise deals. A free sandbox plus a limited production tier of up to 200 live API calls lets developers test before paying. - **Pay as You Go** — Usage-based · Individuals and developers Month-to-month, no upfront commitment, pay only for what you use - Access to GA products - Unlimited live API calls - Link customization - Standard per-product pricing - Core products included (Auth, Balance, Identity, Transactions, Income, Assets, Investments, Liabilities, Enrich, Monitor, Identity Verification) - **Growth** — Contact sales (12-month commitment) · Small teams and startups Discounted rates and support in exchange for an annual commitment - Everything in Pay as You Go - Discounted product rates - Platform support package - Account management - Single Sign-On for the Plaid Dashboard - Contact-for-pricing access to Beacon, Layer, Signal, Transfer, Protect, Consumer Report - **Custom** — Custom · Businesses that need to scale, including regulated industries Volume-based pricing and full product access for large or regulated buyers - Everything in Growth - Access to beta products - Volume discounts - Integration assistance - Premium support - Full access to Beacon, Layer, Signal, Transfer, Protect, Consumer Report Good to know: Free for consumers to connect and control their financial data; Free sandbox for testing; Limited Production: up to 200 live API calls per product to trial with real data; Three underlying billing models: one-time per connected account, monthly subscription per connected account, per-request flat fee; Volume discounts tied to contract length and minimum monthly commitment; Advanced products (Beacon, Layer, Signal, Transfer, Protect, Consumer Report) are gated to Growth (contact for pricing) and Custom ## Competition **The category leader with well-funded challengers on every flank** Plaid is the default in US bank connectivity, but it is boxed in on three sides. MX and Mastercard-owned Finicity fight it directly on US coverage and data quality, with Finicity strong in lending and mortgage. Envestnet's Yodlee brings decades of global reach but a dated developer experience. In Europe, Visa's Tink and TrueLayer own more of the open-banking rails. The sharpest new threat is Stripe Financial Connections, which bundles account verification into a payments stack developers already use and publishes per-call pricing, aimed squarely at Plaid's biggest recurring complaint. Plaid's answer is the network itself: the sheer breadth of institutions and the enriched data flowing across it are hard to rebuild from scratch. ### Their edge - **Network breadth** — 12,000 institutions and 9,000+ fintech partners create a two-sided network that is expensive for rivals to rebuild. - **Developer experience** — Widely seen as the most pleasant aggregator API to build against, versus dated experiences at Yodlee and others. - **Enriched data depth** — Categorized transactions, income, and risk signals go beyond raw connectivity, improving lending and fraud decisions. ### Where they're betting - Bank payments and money movement (Pay by Bank, payouts) to compete with card networks - Becoming the data and trust layer for AI and agentic commerce - European expansion - Moving beyond linking into lending, identity, and fraud ## Proof **The names on the wall are the whole pitch** Plaid does not have to describe its traction so much as point at its logo wall: Venmo, SoFi, Robinhood, Chime, Affirm, Gemini, GoFundMe, H&R Block, Zillow Home Loans, and Adyen all run on it. The customer stories carry the kind of numbers buyers care about. Chime boosted account funding by 300%, Ellevest improved conversion by 111%, Zillow Home Loans pre-approved loans 29% faster, and Robinhood unlocked $100M in instant funds. One customer quote does the heavy lifting: Chime's SVP of Product called Plaid "the gold standard for data quality, security, and coverage" after testing alternatives. ## What People Say **Loved for coverage, needled on price** Among developers, Plaid's reputation rests on the same two things every time: the widest bank coverage in the US and an API that is genuinely pleasant to build against. When a team needs a money feature shipped, Plaid is the safe default. The recurring gripes are price and edges. Smaller shops find the cost steep, which is why Stripe's transparent per-call pricing keeps coming up, and developers occasionally hit flaky connections or wish the docs went deeper. The rough consensus: worth it at scale, harder to justify for a side project. ## Funding **From a $13.4B peak to $6.1B and back up to $8B** Plaid has raised roughly $1.3 billion since 2013, backed early by Spark Capital, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Goldman Sachs, and later Citi Ventures and JP Morgan. The valuation ride tells the fintech decade in miniature: a $13.4 billion mark in 2021, a hard reset to $6.1 billion in an April 2025 round of $575 million led by Franklin Templeton with Fidelity, BlackRock, NEA, and Ribbit Capital, then a recovery to $8 billion in a February 2026 tender. Those later deals were largely about liquidity, letting employees cash out RSUs, and management has said it is not rushing to go public. ## Team & Culture **Late-stage on paper, still swinging like a startup** Plaid runs about 900 team members across six offices, with San Francisco as HQ and a real engineering presence in New York, Seattle, Raleigh-Durham, London, and Amsterdam. The internal line, repeated by employees, is that it is a late-stage company that still operates like a start-up: high autonomy, fast iteration, and permission to break something on Monday and ship the fix by Friday. Engineering leans into that, prizing a growth mindset and bottoms-up ideas, and the company has been public about pushing AI coding tools hard to raise its own velocity. The perks match the profile: catered meals, home office stipends, daycare support, fertility and mental health coverage, and commuting benefits like CitiBike and Lyft. ## Compensation **Big-tech base bands, sorted by a four-zone geography** Plaid discloses pay ranges on its US postings and sets them by geographic zone, with Zone 1 (San Francisco, New York, Seattle) at the top and other cities stepping down from there. Base bands are wide across many disclosed engineering, sales, product, and operations roles, running from roughly $90K at the low end to around $400K for senior and specialized positions. Base is only part of the offer. Postings note that equity and, for sales roles, commission come on top depending on the position, alongside medical, dental, vision, and 401(k). ## Security & Legal **Three legal entities and a consumer-control story** Plaid operates through Plaid Inc. in the US, Plaid Financial Ltd. in the UK, and Plaid B.V. in the EU, with a separate Plaid Consumer Reporting Agency, Inc. handling regulated credit data. Its privacy posture leans on user control: consumers can see and manage what they share through Plaid Portal, and the company frames consent and permissioning as a core product, not a footnote. Given the data it handles, security is central to the sales motion, and the company markets 99.99% uptime on its APIs as part of that trust pitch. ## In the News **A fintech spring, an $8B mark, and a Time100 nod** Recent coverage has been kind. Plaid landed on Time's Time100 Most Influential Companies of 2025, notched its ninth straight year on the Forbes Fintech 50, and reported jumping revenue and usage as its CEO called it a "fintech spring." The February 2026 tender at an $8 billion valuation was the headline financial event, with AI companies now a fifth of new signups. ### Coverage - [Fintech Plaid Completes Tender Offer At $8B Valuation](https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech/plaid-completes-tender-offer-8b-valuation/) — Crunchbase News (2026-02-26) - [Fintech Plaid raises $575M at a $6.1B valuation, says it will not go public in 2025](https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/03/fintech-plaid-raises-575m-at-6-1b-valuation-says-it-will-not-go-public-in-2025/) — TechCrunch (2025-04-03) - [Plaid raises $575 million funding round at $6 billion valuation, enabling some employees to cash out](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/03/plaid-raises-575-million-funding-round-at-6-billion-valuation.html) — CNBC (2025-04-03) - [Plaid notches $575 million funding round as fintech sector rides upswing](https://fortune.com/2025/04/03/fintech-plaid-funding-round-fidelity-blackrock-franklin-templeton-nea-perret/) — Fortune (2025-04-03) - [Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division's Suit to Block](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/visa-and-plaid-abandon-merger-after-antitrust-division-s-suit-block) — U.S. Department of Justice (2021-01-12) - [DOJ files antitrust lawsuit challenging Visa's $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid](https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/05/doj-files-antitrust-lawsuit-challenging-visas-5-3-billion-acquisition-of-plaid/) — TechCrunch (2020-11-05) ## Outlook **Betting the next decade on payments and AI** Plaid's next chapter has two clear bets. The first is money movement: leaning harder into Pay by Bank, payouts, and account-to-account payments to chip at the card networks, the same threat that once made Visa try to buy it. The second is AI, positioning the network as the data and trust layer for financial agents, which is where its fastest customer growth now sits. The open question is pricing pressure. With Stripe and others undercutting on transparency and cost, Plaid's job is to keep its coverage advantage worth the premium while it grows into the higher-margin payments and AI work. ## Company details - **Mission:** Unlock financial freedom for everyone. - **Products:** Link, Auth, Transactions, Balance, Identity, Transfer, Signal, Income, Identity Verification, Monitor, Beacon, Layer, Enrich, Consumer Report - **Notable customers:** Venmo, SoFi, Robinhood, Chime, Affirm, Gemini, GoFundMe, H&R Block, Zillow Home Loans, Adyen, Flexport, Ellevest, Prosper, Green Dot, Uphold, Varo Bank, Copilot, Branch, PadSplit, Invitation Homes, MSUFCU, HealthEquity, Carvana - **Customer segments:** Fintech startups, Digital financial services, Lenders, Banks and credit unions, Enterprises and Fortune 500, AI companies, Developers - **Buyers / users:** Developers, Product teams at fintechs, Lending and credit teams, Fraud and compliance teams, AI product builders - **Competitors:** MX, Finicity (Mastercard), Yodlee (Envestnet), Stripe Financial Connections, Tink (Visa), TrueLayer - **What sets them apart:** Largest US financial data network (network effect that is hard to replicate); Developer-first APIs with 99.99% marketed uptime; Enriched, real-time financial data across transactions, income, and balances; Coverage across 20 countries with local expertise; Free for consumers with a user-control and consent model - **Tech stack:** REST APIs, Plaid Network, Plaid Portal, Plaid Dashboard - **Integrations:** ACH, RTP, FedNow, 12,000+ financial institutions ## Open roles (107) - [Accounting Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/f60cacbf-8960-4eef-bac2-056e5f0c193e) — Remote - [New Business Associate](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/825c384e-613a-4f82-aa87-52fc9b40aa18) — London, United Kingdom - [Technical Program Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/3aa943a7-5982-4449-9fc4-397540043fd2) — San Francisco, CA - [Business Operations](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/bf4450b7-6ed5-49ec-a2ad-a1e0ffbcbe50) — New York, NY - [Product Strategic Finance](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/ec0f80d3-6805-4f97-893a-9a13c43f3df4) — New York, NY - 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[Senior Product Manager, Growth](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/542d46b1-1032-49c8-b96f-806ace7b3a8b) — New York, NY - [Head of Corporate Development](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/4a865873-eafa-423d-b9ae-3afd31ae4678) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Product Manager, Credit](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/72b12284-00b6-4557-a4fb-38eb0b771779) — New York, NY - [Senior Developer Relations Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/7910a552-4ae7-441b-832d-9fa4ef48c0c8) — Remote - [Senior Software Engineer - Product Security](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/dfe0f4e7-1c44-447a-82a7-aa2733b134ad) — New York, NY - [Technical Support Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/3f299587-7bed-4e59-9eb1-2d5d1df01821) — New York, NY - [Account Executive - Payments](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/0dc976f0-a12d-4843-b78c-7d0e14409537) — San Francisco, CA - [Account Executive - Fraud](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/3a0611c3-7b8e-4962-bb48-dcd7ba04f352) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Software Engineer - Security Engineering](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/b7e921dd-5dba-445c-ab05-614f782ffaba) — New York, NY - [Account Executive - Credit](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/15bb46d9-ed78-47c2-80b4-df72f7e4cf5c) — New York, NY - [Senior Software Engineer - AI Tooling](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/3f7a4b9f-50b9-4adf-8475-4a4e6b8f0893) — San Francisco, CA - [Compensation Lead](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/e6747906-9668-4238-861c-dadff9109ac3) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Product Manager, Financial Management](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/8b5aa324-bbb5-472b-8536-76b705c80829) — New York, NY - [Reporter - This Week in Fintech](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/84a5ca91-f601-49f0-a906-21a22e9dc50f) — New York, NY - [Security Engineer, GRC](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/587e83dd-1d1b-4f31-812a-74fc67d67fbe) — San Francisco, CA - [Account Executive - Credit](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/270dab8c-03a5-4a7f-b130-e0ba65a00aa5) — Raleigh, NC - [Staff Software Engineer - Data Governance](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/95225497-fc9b-4c5d-8df0-df98df219ae5) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Data Scientist - Network Value (Plaid App)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/4117610d-c779-47bc-be34-51291ae6493d) — San Francisco, CA - [Business Development Representative - Enterprise](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/b93abf51-f064-4923-ada8-7cc78c8939e8) — New York, NY - [Business Development Representative - Fintech](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/7203c5b9-ae19-4478-84ea-85a11d438174) — New York, NY - [Business Development Representative - Banking & Wealth](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/f91d3207-247f-4e51-babb-24336904bb41) — New York, NY - [Staff Software Engineer - Data Infrastructure](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/127d31ff-3a16-488b-ba01-6e87dbb96957) — San Francisco, CA - [Account Manager - SMB](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/5e848a5f-577f-475c-bd56-19fa566cb6f9) — San Francisco, CA - [Account Executive - Banking and Wealth](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/f0c4f288-9fca-4daf-ba42-7d0e971b5efe) — New York, NY - [Staff Data Scientist - Credit](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/48bff24d-1b4c-46dc-8b0c-b2a63eacb75b) — San Francisco, CA - [Executive Editorial Lead](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/1924cfd6-cfd1-429c-a412-90b8ea46119c) — San Francisco, CA - [Business Operations](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/6b08e0e9-2159-4002-bf54-b30dd5bda80c) — San Francisco, CA - [Product Manager, Fraud Data](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/bda0f40d-5ac5-4ea4-aaab-3e5e013c0a26) — New York, NY - [Software Engineer, Full Stack](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/ecc50d24-e303-480d-85d7-3041c1508cfe) — San Francisco, CA - [Named Account Manager, Enterprise](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/54f2a4e0-44aa-41a2-b3ac-2f930411eb9b) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Software Engineer - Europe](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/89021252-6e43-4128-b996-aef2f0c1483a) — London, United Kingdom - [Sales Development Representative](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/265a7e77-e6c0-4d04-ac35-23b86d21f810) — New York, NY - [Head of Strategic Finance, Product & Engineering](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/568826e2-2abc-43ab-b01d-54cb709de273) — San Francisco, CA - [AI Partner Development - 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