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Visa Buys Plaid

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31–40 of 333 posts

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#31

Plaid is an incredible company and provides a valuable service to their tech partners. That said, their data collection practices are scary. They allow any developer using their software to swallow all of a users banking data - I would love to know how they police bad actors. (Source: https://plaid.com/legal/#privacy-statement )

Here is pertinent verbiage from the Plaid Privacy Statement.

Information we collect from your financial accounts. The information we receive from the financial product and service providers that maintain your financial accounts varies depending on the specific Plaid services developers use to power their applications, as well as the information made available by those providers. But, in general, we collect the following types of identifiers, commercial information, and other personal information from your financial product and service providers:

Account information, including financial institution name, account name, account type, account ownership, branch number, IBAN, BIC, and account and routing number;

Information about an account balance, including current and available balance;

Information about credit accounts, including due dates, balances owed, payment amounts and dates, transaction history, credit limit, repayment status, and interest rate;

Information about loan accounts, including due dates, repayment status, balances, payment amounts and dates, interest rate, guarantor, loan type, payment plan, and terms;

Information about investment accounts, including transaction information, type of asset, identifying details about the asset, quantity, price, fees, and cost basis;

Identifiers and information about the account owner(s), including name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and address information;

Information about account transactions, including amount, date, payee, type, quantity, price, location, involved securities, and a description of the transaction; and

Professional information, including information about your employer, in limited cases where you’ve connected your payroll accounts.

The data collected from your financial accounts includes information from all your accounts (e.g., checking, savings, and credit card) accessible through a single set of account credentials.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization Visa is a $434B company. I guess "innovative" is subjective but their valuation trajectory has looked like a high growth tech co over the past 5 years.

That's fair. 3x valuation growth in the last 5 years is tech company level. More or less the same trajectory as GOOG and FB. It's not Stripe or Airbnb level growth, however.

Well the attractiveness of Visa (V), GOOG and FB is that they are all profitable companies that don't need "hypergrowth" because they own and control their target market.

FB and GOOG own a part of the internet traffic. Almost all of the worlds internet payments goes through VisaNet and is the fundamental processor of these internet payments and have been profitable for years.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#33
post #18

Why is a duopoly like Visa/Mastercard allowed to make acquisitions in its own space?

It's not a duopoly? In the US, AMEX and Discover aren't that difficult to use, and a fair amount of retailers accept in-house credit accounts and international creditors like JCB and UnionPay. Payment via debit networks is still very common, and low-tech forms of payment such as cash and checks are still acceptable in many use cases.

Amex and Discover are different as those are closed-network.

I think it's really hard to argue Visa/MC is not a duopoly. Unfortunately anti-trust enforcement in the US has been more political than anything.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#34
post #16

Will be interesting to see the terms for the acquisition and see if Mary Meeker's last investment for KP was a winner or not! I'm cautiously optimistic for a good outcome for the Plaid folks here: last round was two years ago for $250M. Could they have been suffering $10M/month losses and are running out of money? Could be. No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization or one that…

> No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization Visa is a $434B company. I guess "innovative" is subjective but their valuation trajectory has looked like a high growth tech co over the past 5 years.

That's kind of a weird thing, like my mental picture of Visa is indeed that they're a bit stodgy and behind the times.

But then the other part of me says that I clearly have no clue what I'm talking about, there's basically no chance they could stay relevant this long without being on top of it at some meaningful level. And potential quasi monopoly status doesn't quite capture it. So much of finance has been disrupted by technology, you figure if there's finance companies who wasn't disrupted, it must be because they are the technology.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#35
post #18

Why is a duopoly like Visa/Mastercard allowed to make acquisitions in its own space?

It's not a duopoly? In the US, AMEX and Discover aren't that difficult to use, and a fair amount of retailers accept in-house credit accounts and international creditors like JCB and UnionPay. Payment via debit networks is still very common, and low-tech forms of payment such as cash and checks are still acceptable in many use cases.

Visa is 54% of all card purchases, Mastercard is 23%, and together they're 100% of debit purchases.

Waaaaaay past any reasonable threshold for market power scrutiny.

But antitrust is currently dormant in the USA.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#36

So, pertinent question. I want to move my account to a bank which gives me an API so I don't have to deal with Plaid or Mint. I.e. I want data privacy. I want to build a personal dashboard of where my money is going. Any suggestions?

Just do what Plaid does and scrape it. Your bot could also download a csv file.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#38
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization Visa is a $434B company. I guess "innovative" is subjective but their valuation trajectory has looked like a high growth tech co over the past 5 years.

That's kind of a weird thing, like my mental picture of Visa is indeed that they're a bit stodgy and behind the times. But then the other part of me says that I clearly have no clue what I'm talking about, there's basically no chance they could stay relevant this long without being on top of it at some meaningful level. And potential quasi monopoly status doesn't quite capture it. So much of finance has been disrupte…

It could just be that to be a payment processor, it helps to have a conservative, reliable image.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#39
post #24

Do the early employees get a huge payout on their options?

Even if they had really shitty agreements I bet they'll see something substantial. Reports are saying it was a 5.3 billion purchase price. That's a lot of money for 400 employees.
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