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Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle
- iambateman 4y agoThis is a good, helpful response! As an aside, I’m excited to switch to Stripe’s transactions API from Plaid for MoneyHabitsHQ.com. Plaid’s security review process is “submit questionnaire and wait an unspecified amount of time.” I’m at five weeks of waiting and three help tickets and it’s been absolute silence.
- goleary 4y agoPretty sure I've been waiting 3+ months at this point and am now unable to connect new items via Chase.
- phoenixy1 4y agoThat's really an excessive wait time, I'm sorry. We are working on better systematic approaches to this issue, but in the meantime, would you be willing to send me your info so I can look at what's going on with the ticket? You can DM @plaiddev on Twitter or email customer-feedback@plaid.com
- koch 4y agoWhat is the front page test he refers to (second image, last bullet point)?
- felixrieseberg 4y agoIt's a common test to ensure you're truly comfortable with your decisions and actions: If a major newspaper would describe your actions or quote you directly on their front page tomorrow, would you still stand behind those words and actions? The "test" is much older than Stripe but we often use it as a shorthand to ask ourselves whether we truly think a certain course of action is the right one.
- ergocoder 4y agoIt is a great principle. Great benefit, easy to upkeep I have no idea why most companies don't install this principle since the beginning. I basically assume every email and slack message would be public at some point. It is a bit extreme but it doesn't require that much effort to maintain such principle.
- onphonenow 4y agoWe use this test in a related field. If you read about X on the front page (in potentially a negative light) would you feel good about it, could you stand behind it. This helps with clients who are considering going sideways. Usually their lawyer will make some long complex argument about why something is "OK" or "legal". We might disagree technically as well (ie, no its not legal), but sometimes it is easier to ask, hey, if this were on the front page tomorrow, would you feel good about this? The reality is the board members or whoever who have a lot of reputation really would NOT be OK with whatever - and usually speak up at this point, particularly as their personal upside to doing whatever bogus BS is low and their downsides are often much higher.
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- endisneigh 4y agoI’ll never get over how regressive it is that we are literally clicking on images filled with text as a way to share… text. I seriously cringe each time, lol. Anyway, on topic, it’s good to see this little debacle behind them. Both stripe and plaid offer good services and competition is good in any case. I do wonder if there’s some room for innovation here from Google and Apple. It would be interesting to see if it’s possible to login to any website using plain text passwords in a way that can be delegated to other sites without them knowing the password too. —- Thinking about this more, if browsers generally allowed this it would allow integrations between sites to be implemented pretty fast by simply scrapping text.
- abirch 4y agoIf Reddit made it easy for me to follow people and have stuff pop into my feed like Twitter, I'd walk away from Twitter.
- tootie 4y agoIronically, Reddit's main source of news is screenshots of tweets.
- skrbjc 4y agoLOL, seems the same way on parts of 4chan these days as well
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- robby_w_g 4y agoScreenshots of tweets shared on reddit is so much faster on my phone than loading Twitter mobile. The screenshot is better UX too since I often get re-directed to a sign up page when I load twitter mobile
- twic 4y agoWe're doing this for the sole purpose of trolling Ted Nelson.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoSeems like stripe is constantly getting called out by other fintech companies. Honestly probably points to the key to their success, they play dirty and are in it to win.
- colechristensen 4y agoI think we'd all be better off with more of this kind of thing. Basing your business on "ownership" of ideas or insider knowledge about some topic which can be trivially shared is a poor quality base for profit. So much of our economy is based on charging a lot to do something which would be quite trivial if the "how to do it" information was open.
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- staunch 4y agoNo one hates middlemen more than other middlemen.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoIf anything, this shows that Stripe's competitors believe that Stripe is competently managed. If Google announced a product in this space, Plaid's CEO would have yawned. Google announced a Slack competitor that would be a free addition to its business suite in 2017, and Slack IPO'd two years later at a $30 billion market cap. SPOT opened higher the day after Google announced YouTube Music. I remember when companies would worry that Google would compete with them, but if your product isn't something that can be served on the search results page, there was never anything to worry about.
- cyberlurker 4y agoBecause they kill so many products a few years after launch. They could launch the best whatever app in the world and most people would never touch it because they don’t trust it will be around in a year.
- echelon 4y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but it seems like Stripe just nuked the whole of Plaid's platform and value proposition from orbit. Plaid just went from a decacorn to a cheap acquisition target for PayPal, Square, Shopify, etc. I can understand this being absolutely gut wrenching for the founders and early employees that are still on board. It must feel like having tangible dreams crushed. Not as bad as a cancer diagnosis, but certainly worse than a rejection from your dream school. Competition is an evolutionary force of nature. Brutal at times.
- axg11 4y agoYou are not wrong, although I don't believe this will be the death of Plaid. Their growth is certainly limited. Plaid should focus on improving their product. They made a mistake by not expanding into related product segments. Now they will have to directly compete with Stripe on product quality.
- kbos87 4y agoI think this is right. Plaid will get by, but their ability to capture TAM is now constrained. Because they didn’t expand horizontally into some related product offerings, they now look like a feature while Stripe looks like a platform. It sucks to be on your heels having to play catch-up from their position.
- alonmower 4y agoWhat a whirlwind couple of years for Plaid employees. First the Visa acquisition for 5.3 Billion that falls through because of antitrust, then a round that values them at 13.4 Billion, then fintech and SaaS valuations crater, and now this
- adam_arthur 4y agoStrike while the iron is hot. Any SaaS or speculative tech that sat on the sidelines during this massive bubble did themselves the injustice. Probably most of them actually believed in the numbers though
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- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago> Maybe we should have explicitly reached out to them to discuss this upcoming launch so that they could privately express any concerns they had. A thousand times no. Companies privately discussing launches with each other to avoid stepping on each other's toes is bad for the consumer. In addition, it may actually cross the line into illegal market allocation. I am glad that Stripe developed and released a product that they thought would benefit their consumers. I do not want companies feeling they have to consult another company before entering a market. (which once again may actually be illegal). EDIT: Maybe I am being paranoid, but the tone of the Plaid founder and the apologetic nature of this post, kind of brought back memories of Steve Job's indignant emails about other companies hiring, and their apologetic response which ended up leading to an illegal agreement not to hire each other's workers. I don't want any "gentlemen's agreement" about market allocation and collusion about what products/services will be released.
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- ec109685 4y agoThis is a good point. I don’t think companies can have gentleman’s agreements to not compete with each other.
- kehphin 4y agoAs a consumer, I'd welcome some more competition in this space. All of the personal finance aggregation apps I've tried, e.g. Mint, YNAB, Personal Finance, etc. have used Plaid and almost always, I have issues with connecting one or more banks on any given day. Submitting tickets re: connection issues rarely resolves in a timely manner too.
- heromal 4y agoMint doesn't use Plaid, it uses Intuit's API since the acquisition.
- cobbal 4y agoThe reason I hate plaid is that they are training people to hand over bank passwords/2fa tokens to 3rd parties. And sometimes there are no alternatives available to the consumer.
- wmf 4y agoWhat you hate is not really Plaid but banks for not providing APIs. Banking data is too juicy to ignore, so when banks don't provide APIs of course companies will resort to MITMing.
- LegitShady 4y agoNo, he dislikes the idea of handing login data over, and if your business requires someone else create an API that doesn't exist and they don't want to make, you don't have a business. The reason they need login info is because thats the only way to get data, and a huge security risk for everyone (users, bank, and the service). Nobody is required to build an API for your financial business so it can work, and building such an api is not a small challenge in highly secure areas of business. Personally I won't use any service like this that asks me to break my bank's TOS and hand over login information. That's honestly crazy. I'd rather build my own spreadsheets and dashboards.
- cobbal 4y agoSure, banks are also to blame for it. But I also don't think that excuses Plaid at all.
- ridruejo 4y agoThat’s freaking good leadership in written form if I have seen one…
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- rabidonrails 4y agoI think that people underestimate what this feels like for the Plaid founder and potentially for Patrick too. For Plaid you've spent your life building this business. Presumably there are many happy customers and you're working really hard to define the space and provide service. One morning you flip on your laptop and see a headline that one of your customers (and competitors) launched a new service that directly competes with yours. As the founder of "attacked" company not only do you see the competition coming from a customer but from another "friendly" company in your space. Yesterday you were friends, today you're enemies. Doesn't matter who you are, this comes as a shock and it stings. Worse still, when you show up on HN, a space that in the past might have championed your service, you are now met with comments about how your customers are excited to switch. Showing up to HN and seeing your comrades immediately jump ship stings no matter who you are. And if you're Stripe leadership and you believe that you're playing an infinite game, then pissing off another similarly minded company (and supplier) isn't a good feeling either.
- bestcoder69 4y agoPlease… my violin can’t get any tinier or we risk splitting the atom.
- Jcowell 4y agoI don’t think OP isn’t asking for sympathy but empathy? Is this the name of the game ? Yeah it is , always has , always will be. Does it suck for the loser ? Yes for course.
- bestcoder69 4y agoIt’s fair to ask I guess. But thats just gonna be another form of disappointment for them…
- arinlen 4y ago> I don’t think OP isn’t asking for sympathy but empathy? Is this the name of the game ? Unless you believe a company like Plaid is entitled to a monopoly and should be free from any semblance of competition, I don't see a problem with that. What happened to free market capitalism?
- anon_3b4150 4y agoI have dealt with Stripe as a partner for my last three companies, and I do not trust them. The core team was A+ and very reasonable, but the non-core folks would regularly lie and misrepresent themselves. I have to be careful about examples because I don't want blowback to my colleagues, but here's one: telling a third party that they should not do a hybrid Stripe + my_old_company solution because our product couldn't support the use case. But, of course, we had the exact product requested in market then, and the team in question knew that. It's fine to want to close a deal, and I guess some people lie to close a deal. But saying one thing to me and another thing to the world has happened many times with Stripe. I don't know anything about this particular case, but it does match a pattern that I have seen firsthand.
- sbierwagen 4y ago>telling a third party that they should not do a hybrid Stripe + my_old_company solution because our product couldn't support the use case. To be clear, are you complaining about salesmen at a competitor lying to close a sale? Are you also unhappy about water being wet, or bears shitting in the woods?
- anon_3b4150 4y agoNo, that is not what happened. We were partnering with Stripe on a deal that we originated. They verbally agreed to terms. They then lied about our abilities. So we cut Stripe out, got the deal, and moved on. The point isn't that competition exists; the point is that Stripe will say one thing and do another. If this is how you live your life, fine, but many people would like to know that Stripe has a history of bad behavior.
- sbierwagen 4y ago>We were partnering with Stripe on a deal that we originated. So... a sale? The Stripe staff you were working with were from the sales department?
- hitekker 4y ago
- 0xedb 4y ago"We're the exact opposite of Apple in this regard. People will buy fewer iPhones today if they know what the new one will do. But people are probably more likely to buy Stripe today if they know that the future Stripe will be even better" Will you keep your old iPhone if you knew what the new version will do?
- wsinks 4y agoHe's referencing that if you're looking to purchase a new iPhone right at this very minute, no matter if you already have a phone, that purchase decision can be influenced if there's information about a newer product that hasn't been released. I buy a phone about every 5 years. Will I wait a year if I find out that the new phone has a different chip in it that does something amazing? Absolutely! I'll wait, not give Apple any money this year, and give them money next year.
- kbos87 4y agoI don’t know all the specifics of the interaction that happened here, but the hard truth is that if you aren’t eventually expecting this to happen to your business - regardless of the space you are in - you aren’t being realistic about the nature of competition in SaaS. Plaid has enjoyed years of life without much direct competition. My hunch is that few other businesses were interested in the space because it feels inherently fragile, and Plaid has had the benefit from having spent years doing a lot of sausage making. The inevitable dynamics of competition are finally catching up to them. In established corners of SaaS a vendor with a unique idea barely gets 6 months before their competitors have replicated anything that shows signs of product market fit. Not saying it doesn’t sting, but that’s reality.
- websap 4y agoStripe seems to be gearing up to become the AWS of the FinTech world.
- pbreit 4y agoWell, Yodlee & Finicity pre-dated Plaid by many years. But Plaid executed much better.
- kbos87 4y agoThank you for the education on the history here. That makes Plaid’s indignance about new competition even less palatable.
- candiddevmike 4y agoMaybe this entire thing will serve as a warning to those who don't have an easy pricing calculator on their website.
- pastor_bob 4y agoI still find this to be rather passive aggressive. Sharing an 'internal' doc immediately...Why not call a public statement? Mention Zach deleted his tweet, but not mention what he actually said: "Deleted tweet. Misunderstanding or different styles perhaps. Presuming positive intent." All so underhanded [0]https://twitter.com/zachperret/status/1522444749877088256 https://twitter.com/zachperret/status/1522444749877088256
- nazka 4y agoI actually find him to be too defensive instead of passive aggressive. It's his job to create new products, new features, and new tools for his customers. He shouldn't be so sorry like that. Should any CEO be sorry every time they start to compete with someone else? And what about Plaid here? It's weird if you think about it. That you will have to feel sorry and go public statements and things like that to have to talk about it. Finally. Plaid should have seen that coming a long time ago. In fact I can't even imagine any of their chief officers never having to see that coming. Edit: the classy way as an example is Airbus response to Boeing after their failure with the 747 Max or what. Now that's some clean PR well done. And they never had to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWaTjYpczKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWaTjYpczKQ
- samirsd 4y agoPlaid was and is “just a feature” so this day should have come as no surprise… or am I missing something?
- gimme_treefiddy 4y agoWhat we really need a thread by Ryan Breslow.
- vmception 4y agoThe only thing I learned from this is that both companies have ways to connect directly to banks via API…. sometimes for some banks, sometimes and the consumer cant tell at any time.
- astrange 4y agoIt's pretty obvious, you go through an OAuth flow on the bank's website.
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- drcongo 4y agoWhy is so much of Stripe's dirty laundry aired out in the open? It never looks good.
- eins1234 4y agoA lot of comments here saying that this is the death knell for Plaid, but I wouldn't be so sure. Stripe has launched competitors to existing fintech products and failed to gain traction plenty of times before. Example: Remember the Stripe Corporate Card? It was "launched" as invite-only 3 years ago and is still invite only today, with little signs of traction. Meanwhile both Brex and Ramp have become decacorns through crazy revenue growth. It's not really just a Stripe thing either. I think people are way under-estimating how hard it is for a large company to launch and succeed with a product outside of their core offering, especially when the competition is a small nimble startup with a singlular focus on that one product. Startups die all the time, for all sorts of reasons, but "large company started competing with it" is a rather rare one.
- eins1234 4y agoRe: Plaid itself, having used some of their competitors, specifically Finicity, which is one of Stripe's partners for this, I wouldn't be too worried if I were them. IME, Plaid is lightyears ahead in terms of reliability and overall developer and end-user experience.
- Aeolun 4y agoThe product maybe, but my interactions with the company have been dissapointing.
- sangnoir 4y ago> IME, Plaid is lightyears ahead in terms of reliability and overall developer and end-user experience. I regret handing over my bank login details to Plaid, since they scraped my bank statements without stating so upfront and offered that information to 3rd parties (indirectly, as a score of some sort, IIRC, but that's scraping very personal information). When I mentioned it on HN a year or 2 ago, someone who works there denied the practice - might have been a cofounder. A few months ago I was contacted regarding a settlement for a Plaid class action suit regarding the very actions that had been denied on HN. Plaid - never again.
- 4y ago
- guelo 4y agoI want an API to my account data but I don't want any of these 3rd parties having access. The banking free market has failed, we need regulators to require apis.
- ergocoder 4y agoI'm surprised that all the comments here are not about how Plaid CEO maliciously misled people. "Interview" turns out to be a job interview before Jay even joined Stripe back in 2014. Jay started working on this product in 2019. "RFP" turns out to be a regular RFP where Stripe wants to integrate with multiple partners like MX and finicity. In the past few years, Plaid CEO and Plaid requested meetings with Jay. Jay never initiated those meetings. Now Plaid CEO has deleted the tweet and acted like Stripe Mafia has got to him. LOL Plaid CEO has very low ethics, it seems.