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Visa Buys Plaid

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Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#151
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to post these things, without identifying companies. I'm sure you could find them on my resume or linkedin but there'll still be some ambiguity. Company A, 0.05% or 9000+ options vested, IPO, post-lockout sale at net ~$300k, was an early engineering employee Company B, Make sure you do proper tax planning, taxes take an enormous bite, even with long term capital gains.

What do you mean by tax planning? If your company IPOs they will withhold shares for you. Only thing to watch for is depending on your income they might underwithold. There isn’t much more to it than that.

My experience was significantly different. My advice is to consult a tax attorney and accountant with experience in these matters, don't trust the company to do it for you.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#152
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to post these things, without identifying companies. I'm sure you could find them on my resume or linkedin but there'll still be some ambiguity. Company A, 0.05% or 9000+ options vested, IPO, post-lockout sale at net ~$300k, was an early engineering employee Company B, Make sure you do proper tax planning, taxes take an enormous bite, even with long term capital gains.

What tax-planning resources did you find useful?

Consult an experienced tax attorney and CPA in your state. For a six figure sum the taxes make the cost of an attorney and CPA a rounding error.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#153
post #141

Slightly off topic, but worth highlighting. Privacy virtual card use Plaid (well at least the last time I looked at it a few months back). The integration was extremely questionable. They were faking the bank’s login page. So when you enter your credentials, it wasn’t the actual banks page. There was a github issue opened, and after several followed up complaints they blocked further commenting and the removed then t…

Do you have a link to thread in question?

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Discover and Amex debit cards exist.

Not sure what relevance that might have. It's antitrust law, not "monopoly law", and there's no legal requirement that no competitors exist in order for the law to be involved. Antitrust law is about market power, not some imaginary narrow definition of "monopoly".

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All the POS tech is behind the times, because retailers don't want to spend the money to upgrade. But behind the scenes I'm sure their fraud detection etc. is quite reasonable. It seems their main software division is in India and in the US it's mostly sales, servers, mobile, and POS support, suggesting that the company is focused on the bottom line and probably could be disrupted. For example Bitcoin is getting more…

Visa is extremely unlikely to be disrupted. Their Network links almost every bank in the world. It would take decades for a competitor to sign up all the random banks out there. Furthermore the intermediate steps are not really that lucrative. It'd take tremendous up front cost and patience.

Apple couldn't even do it with their in-house credit card.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discover and Amex debit cards exist.

Not sure what relevance that might have. It's antitrust law, not "monopoly law", and there's no legal requirement that no competitors exist in order for the law to be involved. Antitrust law is about market power, not some imaginary narrow definition of "monopoly".

I was simply refuting the claim that 100% of debit purchases are Visa + MC.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#157
post #45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m personally a bit surprised that banks haven’t embraced U2F / WebAuthn as a way to disable Plaid.

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.

Big Banks want to block all this stuff. It’s both a security risk and also reduces the friction to migrate banks. Alternative to plaids ach verification is micro deposits which takes at least 1 days to verify the account. Banks have negative NPS score and people don’t move because it’s a lot of effort including moving all your bill pay info etc.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#158
I’m wondering if this will make Plaid’s pricing more or less opaque. Right now it’s go build it and then negotiate a rate. I think they would get a lot more uptake if they had upfront pricing.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#159
post #141

Slightly off topic, but worth highlighting. Privacy virtual card use Plaid (well at least the last time I looked at it a few months back). The integration was extremely questionable. They were faking the bank’s login page. So when you enter your credentials, it wasn’t the actual banks page. There was a github issue opened, and after several followed up complaints they blocked further commenting and the removed then t…

Collecting actual banking credentials is how plaid works, quite literally. One needs to be clinically insane to give your bank login creds to a third party voluntarily! I refuse to do business with any business that uses plaid and has no sane alternative to get bank account numbers (deposit two small amounts, three days later I tell you what they are) First time i saw it, i assumed the website had been hacked. I was…

Indeed. Sharing your banking credentials with a third party almost certainly violates the terms of service you agreed on with your bank. If the third party has a security lapse and your bank account is drained, your bank might just claim that you authorized that transaction with your credentials, so it's a valid transaction and they won't shell out their own money to refund your loss.

If in doubt, you should check your bank's terms of service for online banking.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#160
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are fewer than 10 states that don't tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income. Most states tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income. And then 10 states don't tax income at all.

Sounds like a great reason to relocate to a state that is more reasonable about income taxes than CA.

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