Plaid does not get API access to your bank account. Plaid logs into the same interface you do and scrapes the data. It’s why account import in things like Mint,

Plaid does not get API access to your bank account. Plaid logs into the same interface you do and scrapes the data. It’s why account import in things like Mint, YNAB etc are so flaky. EDIT: It seems Plaid has negotiated API access with some institutions at this point, but historically has primarily relied on screen scraping.