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If Stripe can leverage their banking relationships to leapfrog Plaid by integrating directly with bank's APIs instead of doing screen scraping... that would be

If Stripe can leverage their banking relationships to leapfrog Plaid by integrating directly with bank's APIs instead of doing screen scraping... that would be massive! It seems like Plaid's biggest weakness is the flakiness of their connections, which creates so much frustration/churn downstream. Plaid's other weakness is their opaque, enterprise-style pricing, which is seems like Stripe is doing away with. Hopefully they can bring the price down, because lots of consumer-facing use cases aren't viable due to the high monthly price per connection. I hope they add support for investment account holdings—it seems like Plaid is the only one that does this well. — Edit: digging deeper, it looks like Stripe proxies to Plaid-like "service providers" under the covers—at least for institutions without OAuth flows. [1][2][3] Presumably they'll build in-house connections over time, but it dents my hope that their connectivity will be better than Plaid's. Either way, transparent pricing and more competition in the space is still welcome! [1]: https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-is-the-relationship-between-stripe-and-stripe-s-service-providers https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-is-the-relationshi... [2]: https://support.stripe.com/questions/how-does-stripe-limit-data-use-by-service-providers https://support.stripe.com/questions/how-does-stripe-limit-d... [3]: https://support.stripe.com/questions/who-will-obtain-my-financial-institution-login-credentials https://support.stripe.com/questions/who-will-obtain-my-fina...

zht 4y ago
It's unlikely Stripe has access to any APIs that Plaid doesn't also have access to.
- sz429961 4y ago
  it's also unlikely Stripe doesn't have access to any APIs that Plaid has access to
  - zht 4y ago
    sorry what? no one was saying Plaid had access to more APIs than Stripe
    - sz429961 4y ago
      right, which makes it easy to clone the whole set of APIs
- FintechRisen 4y ago
  We've found that Plaid only leverages around 3-4 Direct API connections for some reason, why other aggregators like MX, Finicity, Yodlee all have 10+. It seems suspect to me because Plaid doesn't seem to be prioritizing the protection of user credentials the same way others are.
  - fintechguy1234 4y ago
    This is false. Hundreds of banks have built out api's on plaid exchange: https://plaid.com/plaid-exchange/ https://plaid.com/plaid-exchange/
    - phoenixy1 4y ago
      Yeah, at this point the majority of API requests that Plaid fulfills are filled with data provisioned from institutions via an API. I assume that OP was only looking at named banks who we did press releases with (e.g. Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One) but there are many more financial institutions we have API integrations with beyond that, either via Plaid Exchange or via their own APIs. [I work at Plaid]
  - lucasmullens 4y ago
    In this thread you've accused the founder of Plaid multiple times of lying, without evidence, and most importantly, your account was made only 1 hour ago. You've said "Stop lying bro.", "hella sus", "This is 100% a lie", "seems suspect", all without evidence. You seem to have some ulterior motive here that you haven't disclosed. Maybe you're right about everything, but it comes across poorly.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    It's not a good luck for Stripe to have one of its employees astroturfing the competition.
gigatexal 4y ago
If they do this it would indeed be huge. Screen scraping and the like to get around a proper API sucks. In the EU we have PSD2 but the APIs aren’t all amazing.
- andy_ppp 4y ago
  Also every 90 days you have to do some weird dance to keep the apps receiving your data, it never seems to work right and you forget. I would think building a business on such flakey APIs is dubious at best!
  - dylan604 4y ago
    To fight that flakey situation of bad APIs, one decides to build a business based on flakey screen scraping instead? With financial information? What could possibly go wrong?
    - dakev 4y ago
      What's the alternative? 95% of banks in the US don't have a dedicated API. If there was no screen scraping whatsoever in the industry, then the fintech market would be much smaller. Any fintech company whose product is centered their users' financial information (and that's most of them) would see their potential customer base, and thus growth potential, sliced in half. On the consumer side of it, if you're Susan and you bank with Northeast Minnesota's Credit Union for Educators, then without screen scraping you are essentially cut off from being able to use the majority of fintech applications out there. Screen scraping is a terrible compromise for sure, but without it, fintech, and the everyday consumer's ability to more effectively engage with their finances, would be severely neutered. One day, we'll have a rich financial ecosystem where financial institutions, fintechs, and consumers all talk with eachother exclusively through secure, reliable APIs, but until then, the only other alternative is to cripple this entire industry. Or have Congress pass a sweeping PSD2-esque bill, but good luck with that lol
    - andy_ppp 4y ago
      I like the APIs but every 90 days is too many lost users I bet. I think it would be nice if the renewal worked like this -> 1st permissions -> 90 days, 2nd authorisation 180 days, 3rd 365 days and then every renewal after that is a year. Would reduce churn from this by probably 75%... Even better it would be best if it just emailed you every 90 days asking if you wanted to remove/continue with permissions and did token rolling automatically without the user being involved. Imagine if you had to renew your account for Facebook every 90 days, I think they would never have built a business.
kareemsabri 4y ago
Pretty sure Plaid already has integrated directly with bank's APIs and has been moving away from screen scraping for years. Plaid's flakiness / reliance on screen scraping is probably that a lot of these banks don't expose APIs / OAuth etc.
- zachperret 4y ago
  Indeed! Plaid is integrated with ~every bank that has an API, and in many cases we've actually helped the banks build API's themselves.
  - gonehome 4y ago
    Do you know why Fidelity Investments plaid connection doesn’t work most of the time? It’s something I hit often and have to do the old microdeposit thing (if I can even figure out how to trick the service into allowing me to do that at all). Does fidelity just have some sort of broken setup?
    - zachperret 4y ago
      Great question. I do not know off the top of my head, but can look into it.
    - aarohmankad 4y ago
      Not sure when you were testing, but we do call out some instability on the Fidelity Institution Status page in the Developer Dashboard. > To maintain system stability, Fidelity currently limits access during high-volume windows. As a result, please expect unavailability between 9-10:30am and 3-4:30pm ET. We recommend end users link Fidelity accounts between 5pm - 9am ET.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      This is a huge annoyance with integrations for me. The host knows when they break. Or if they don't, they should, via automated tests. Tell me "It's down." Not some bullshit about experiencing temporary difficulties.
zachperret 4y ago
Plaid founder here. Stripe does not integrate with any bank API's directly (AFAICT). They wrap two aggregators, MX and Finicity to build this product. (Also, not sure what MX products they are using, but MX itself is an aggregator of aggregators, including others such as Yodlee.) On pricing, Stripe's listed rates are 30-200% higher than Plaid rates (perhaps due to high vendor costs). That said, if anyone does have feedback on where Plaid pricing is prohibiting new use cases, we'd love to hear! I'm zach at plaid if folks would like to discuss.
- ianstormtaylor 4y ago
  Thanks for the reply! I came to that same conclusion about their use of "service providers" after reading through their support docs (and added an edit above), definitely a bummer.
  - zachperret 4y ago
    We all wish more banks had API's! Our team is actively working with many more banks to launch them soon, but alas -- legacy infrastructure is slow to move!
- emrekzd 4y ago
  Unlike Plaid, Finicity and Yodlee have direct integrations with some banks. Example: Silicon Valley Bank has direct integration with Finicity. SVB through Plaid breaks quickly (because they require some weird 2fa policy). Let me know if I'm missing something but if Stripe is A) providing reliable connection to common banks Plaid misses and B) saving it's users from all the headaches of integrating with old school services like Finicity/Yodlee, then charging a premium sounds like fair game.
  - phoenixy1 4y ago
    Plaid has direct integrations with many banks too -- Silicon Valley Bank is actually a Plaid partner for ACH processing (see https://www.svb.com/news/company-news/silicon-valley-bank-and-plaid-partner-to-provide-secure-and-efficient-tokenized-payment-solutions https://www.svb.com/news/company-news/silicon-valley-bank-an...). Not sure when your bad experience with 2fa was but Plaid's connection to SVB has improved over the past ~6 months as we've begun to work together more closely and should continue to do so. [I work at Plaid]
tootie 4y ago
Hasn't Yodlee been doing this way longer than Plaid? They are (or at least were) the backbone for mint.com
seandoh 4y ago
Plaid actually doesn't do investment account holdings well. My team tried using them for an app and ended up building our own API to address the problem https://realizefi.com/ https://realizefi.com/. We provide real-time holdings, transactions, orders, historical performance (Plaid doesn't provide this at all), and balances.
- ianstormtaylor 4y ago
  Hey! Looks interesting. The two things that would hold me back from using it are (a) not enough institution support, for big places like Vanguard and Fidelity where many people have investments, and (b) no clear pricing structure listed that I could see, so I assume it’s going to be more expensive than Plaid.
  - seandoh 4y ago
    Thanks! We're currently releasing Fidelity and will have IBKR & Vanguard released within the next 2 months. Sorry for the lack of a pricing page - we're going to add that in. We have graduated pricing starting at $1/mo per linked account and decreasing at different levels of scale. That fee includes unlimited API calls. We're also offering discounted pricing to companies that integrate within the next 60 days. Feel free to email me whenever at sean@realizefi.com
  - seandoh 4y ago
    Added our pricing page to the website - https://www.realizefi.com/pricing.html https://www.realizefi.com/pricing.html Our Fidelity integration will be out by the end of this week.

zht 4y ago

It's unlikely Stripe has access to any APIs that Plaid doesn't also have access to.

sz429961 4y ago
it's also unlikely Stripe doesn't have access to any APIs that Plaid has access to
- zht 4y ago
  sorry what? no one was saying Plaid had access to more APIs than Stripe
  - sz429961 4y ago
    right, which makes it easy to clone the whole set of APIs
FintechRisen 4y ago
We've found that Plaid only leverages around 3-4 Direct API connections for some reason, why other aggregators like MX, Finicity, Yodlee all have 10+. It seems suspect to me because Plaid doesn't seem to be prioritizing the protection of user credentials the same way others are.
- fintechguy1234 4y ago
  This is false. Hundreds of banks have built out api's on plaid exchange: https://plaid.com/plaid-exchange/ https://plaid.com/plaid-exchange/
  - phoenixy1 4y ago
    Yeah, at this point the majority of API requests that Plaid fulfills are filled with data provisioned from institutions via an API. I assume that OP was only looking at named banks who we did press releases with (e.g. Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One) but there are many more financial institutions we have API integrations with beyond that, either via Plaid Exchange or via their own APIs. [I work at Plaid]
- lucasmullens 4y ago
  In this thread you've accused the founder of Plaid multiple times of lying, without evidence, and most importantly, your account was made only 1 hour ago. You've said "Stop lying bro.", "hella sus", "This is 100% a lie", "seems suspect", all without evidence. You seem to have some ulterior motive here that you haven't disclosed. Maybe you're right about everything, but it comes across poorly.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  It's not a good luck for Stripe to have one of its employees astroturfing the competition.

gigatexal 4y ago

If they do this it would indeed be huge. Screen scraping and the like to get around a proper API sucks. In the EU we have PSD2 but the APIs aren’t all amazing.

andy_ppp 4y ago
Also every 90 days you have to do some weird dance to keep the apps receiving your data, it never seems to work right and you forget. I would think building a business on such flakey APIs is dubious at best!
- dylan604 4y ago
  To fight that flakey situation of bad APIs, one decides to build a business based on flakey screen scraping instead? With financial information? What could possibly go wrong?
  - dakev 4y ago
    What's the alternative? 95% of banks in the US don't have a dedicated API. If there was no screen scraping whatsoever in the industry, then the fintech market would be much smaller. Any fintech company whose product is centered their users' financial information (and that's most of them) would see their potential customer base, and thus growth potential, sliced in half. On the consumer side of it, if you're Susan and you bank with Northeast Minnesota's Credit Union for Educators, then without screen scraping you are essentially cut off from being able to use the majority of fintech applications out there. Screen scraping is a terrible compromise for sure, but without it, fintech, and the everyday consumer's ability to more effectively engage with their finances, would be severely neutered. One day, we'll have a rich financial ecosystem where financial institutions, fintechs, and consumers all talk with eachother exclusively through secure, reliable APIs, but until then, the only other alternative is to cripple this entire industry. Or have Congress pass a sweeping PSD2-esque bill, but good luck with that lol
  - andy_ppp 4y ago
    I like the APIs but every 90 days is too many lost users I bet. I think it would be nice if the renewal worked like this -> 1st permissions -> 90 days, 2nd authorisation 180 days, 3rd 365 days and then every renewal after that is a year. Would reduce churn from this by probably 75%... Even better it would be best if it just emailed you every 90 days asking if you wanted to remove/continue with permissions and did token rolling automatically without the user being involved. Imagine if you had to renew your account for Facebook every 90 days, I think they would never have built a business.

kareemsabri 4y ago

Pretty sure Plaid already has integrated directly with bank's APIs and has been moving away from screen scraping for years. Plaid's flakiness / reliance on screen scraping is probably that a lot of these banks don't expose APIs / OAuth etc.

zachperret 4y ago
Indeed! Plaid is integrated with ~every bank that has an API, and in many cases we've actually helped the banks build API's themselves.
- gonehome 4y ago
  Do you know why Fidelity Investments plaid connection doesn’t work most of the time? It’s something I hit often and have to do the old microdeposit thing (if I can even figure out how to trick the service into allowing me to do that at all). Does fidelity just have some sort of broken setup?
  - zachperret 4y ago
    Great question. I do not know off the top of my head, but can look into it.
  - aarohmankad 4y ago
    Not sure when you were testing, but we do call out some instability on the Fidelity Institution Status page in the Developer Dashboard. > To maintain system stability, Fidelity currently limits access during high-volume windows. As a result, please expect unavailability between 9-10:30am and 3-4:30pm ET. We recommend end users link Fidelity accounts between 5pm - 9am ET.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    This is a huge annoyance with integrations for me. The host knows when they break. Or if they don't, they should, via automated tests. Tell me "It's down." Not some bullshit about experiencing temporary difficulties.

zachperret 4y ago

Plaid founder here. Stripe does not integrate with any bank API's directly (AFAICT). They wrap two aggregators, MX and Finicity to build this product. (Also, not sure what MX products they are using, but MX itself is an aggregator of aggregators, including others such as Yodlee.) On pricing, Stripe's listed rates are 30-200% higher than Plaid rates (perhaps due to high vendor costs). That said, if anyone does have feedback on where Plaid pricing is prohibiting new use cases, we'd love to hear! I'm zach at plaid if folks would like to discuss.

ianstormtaylor 4y ago
Thanks for the reply! I came to that same conclusion about their use of "service providers" after reading through their support docs (and added an edit above), definitely a bummer.
- zachperret 4y ago
  We all wish more banks had API's! Our team is actively working with many more banks to launch them soon, but alas -- legacy infrastructure is slow to move!
emrekzd 4y ago
Unlike Plaid, Finicity and Yodlee have direct integrations with some banks. Example: Silicon Valley Bank has direct integration with Finicity. SVB through Plaid breaks quickly (because they require some weird 2fa policy). Let me know if I'm missing something but if Stripe is A) providing reliable connection to common banks Plaid misses and B) saving it's users from all the headaches of integrating with old school services like Finicity/Yodlee, then charging a premium sounds like fair game.
- phoenixy1 4y ago
  Plaid has direct integrations with many banks too -- Silicon Valley Bank is actually a Plaid partner for ACH processing (see https://www.svb.com/news/company-news/silicon-valley-bank-and-plaid-partner-to-provide-secure-and-efficient-tokenized-payment-solutions https://www.svb.com/news/company-news/silicon-valley-bank-an...). Not sure when your bad experience with 2fa was but Plaid's connection to SVB has improved over the past ~6 months as we've begun to work together more closely and should continue to do so. [I work at Plaid]

tootie 4y ago

Hasn't Yodlee been doing this way longer than Plaid? They are (or at least were) the backbone for mint.com

seandoh 4y ago

Plaid actually doesn't do investment account holdings well. My team tried using them for an app and ended up building our own API to address the problem https://realizefi.com/ https://realizefi.com/. We provide real-time holdings, transactions, orders, historical performance (Plaid doesn't provide this at all), and balances.

ianstormtaylor 4y ago
Hey! Looks interesting. The two things that would hold me back from using it are (a) not enough institution support, for big places like Vanguard and Fidelity where many people have investments, and (b) no clear pricing structure listed that I could see, so I assume it’s going to be more expensive than Plaid.
- seandoh 4y ago
  Thanks! We're currently releasing Fidelity and will have IBKR & Vanguard released within the next 2 months. Sorry for the lack of a pricing page - we're going to add that in. We have graduated pricing starting at $1/mo per linked account and decreasing at different levels of scale. That fee includes unlimited API calls. We're also offering discounted pricing to companies that integrate within the next 60 days. Feel free to email me whenever at sean@realizefi.com
- seandoh 4y ago
  Added our pricing page to the website - https://www.realizefi.com/pricing.html https://www.realizefi.com/pricing.html Our Fidelity integration will be out by the end of this week.