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Visa Buys Plaid

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Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#91

Post by thamer »

sithlord wrote: post #81
nikolay wrote: post #48

Plaid is terrible! Both Wells Fargo and Bank of America support API integration, but Plaid chooses to screen-scrape and does not work if you have 2FA enabled. Also, you can't even manually enter your bank information. In other words, even if you pay dearly to Plaid, you may block many users who use some of the top banks in the States! There is a bunch of services I cannot use because they rely solely on Plaid, and I'…

pretty sure this is false, all my accounts are 2FA, and connected to a few different account aggregators (mint, personalcapital, etc) which i am prettty sure all use Plaid. Handles it fine.

My Wells Fargo account uses 2FA, and recently (November 2019) I was unable to connect a service to it through Plaid, getting an error that said my account type was not supported – or something along those lines.

They may have fixed it by now, I haven't tried more recently.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#92

Post by sroussey »

tempsy wrote: post #51
erikig wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary - Banks are falling over themselves to embrace Plaid, Finicity, Decisionlogic, Yodlee and all their ilk because failure to do so will result in the departure of their customers to a bank that supports all the new fintech apps that rely on these API providers.

No, if anything banks have been catching on to Plaid and many have decided to stop supporting it e.g. Capital One has been on/off it for years. Banks aren't exactly happy that their API is basically scraping their website, for very valid reasons, including the customer's own security. If enough of the big banks decided they had enough of Plaid then it would present a massive existential threat to the business. If any…

Or PSD2 will make their tech outdated. Europe’s push for open banking may not be fast but it is relentless.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#93

Post by xj9 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #86
xj9 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me this move indicates weakness. its a fine exit for the early employees and the executive team, but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a realistic vision for future profitability. maybe the only vision for the future they want to pursue involves some expensive investment or the business was built on massive debt that can only be paid of in this way. i want to be a part of building som…

At this point, what difference does it make? Visa can survive as an independent, profitable entity by your criteria. > but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a realistic vision for future profitability. They had 5.3 billion reasons to sell. With an acquisition offer that high, it's not about the company's ability to survive independently. It's about doing what's in the best financial inte…

i didn't say "fully independent" i talked about a willingness to pursue independence. that's the difference that i care about. i value independence more than money. you do need a certain amount of money to be autonomous, but its about end goals. i don't agree with the end goal of "make the best business deals for the biggest amount of money". besides, long-term you make way more money if you are independent. i have respect for visa and i'd work there because they do value independence, but i wouldn't work for a subsidiary who couldn't hack it as a competitor.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#94

Post by blensor »

nikolay wrote: post #48

Plaid is terrible! Both Wells Fargo and Bank of America support API integration, but Plaid chooses to screen-scrape and does not work if you have 2FA enabled. Also, you can't even manually enter your bank information. In other words, even if you pay dearly to Plaid, you may block many users who use some of the top banks in the States! There is a bunch of services I cannot use because they rely solely on Plaid, and I'…

Are there any APIs out there that show the separate amounts a counter credit is made out of (for Bank of America accounts)? We wanted to use it for importing transactions into our system but if several checks are deposited at once the amount would have to ne split manually as it comes in as one transaction.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#95

Post by [deleted] »

brunoTbear wrote: post #17
tempsy wrote: 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.

[deleted]

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#96

Post by yalogin »

Didn't know such a thing existed till now. They took the feature that mint and others built early on and turned it into a business. Awesome. Have no idea how good it is but a multibillion dollar exit is great.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#97

Post by joewadcan »

smeyer wrote: post #88
curiousDog wrote: post #85

Curious what happens to options that are yet to vest when a company gets acquired like this? I had a potential offer from them and I'll be losing some sleep tonight :(

There's some flexibility, but often the unvested options in the acquired company are converted into unvested options in the acquiring company on the same schedule.

> often the unvested options in the acquired company are converted into unvested options in the acquiring company on the same schedule

Yup, and I'd clarify that the new options aren't 1:1, but calculated based on some price-per-share of the acquired company.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#99

Post by sbahr001 »

tempsy wrote: post #33
sithadmin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would say this is an example where a duopoly is useful for consumers. The duopoly allows consumers the ability to use a credit card pretty much anywhere they want in the US; This is pretty convenient if you use a credit card responsively. It is also a better solution than the old days where you would have store cards or a store account. (I am not saying the duopoly is great because these companies are a massive headache for businesses, and increase the cost of things)
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