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Visa Buys Plaid

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231–240 of 333 posts

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#231
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Bank of America and Wells Fargo do technically have APIs, though they're limited in scope to corporate accounts for treasury purposes. I've applied for access to both and both declined to even a sandbox account.

Think what you want about the EU, but sometimes they have good initiatives. https://www.eu-startups.com/2019/09/open-banking-and-what-it...

Truelayer (although a smaller company) is the equivalent of Plaid in EU.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I never wanted to use Mint, although maybe Mint is better about this now. I've also seen online mortgage applications ask for banking and retirement account passwords for the purpose of automated form-filling. It seems very shortsighted to give away your password to save 5 minutes filling out a form. The nightmare scenario is that you give your bank account password to one of these screen scraping service…

Mint used to sync with Chase and Wells Fargo through sketchy scraping, but those banks have since then integrated with Mint over APIs. Mint then disabled syncing until customers reestablished the connection with the new, more secure, method (which I thought was a good move)

For a while they were using Yodlee for the backend (which did all sorts of weird stuff), but I think they rewrote it after Intuit bought them.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#233
There is a service like this in Australia, POLi. It's used almost exclusively to facilitate EFT transactions to vendors that can't use the regular channels like PayPal, local Banks, or Mastercard/Visa. ie. Porno, gambling, bitcoins, drugs.

I learned about it by working in gambling. I cannot believe that people are OK with just giving their online banking details to a company. It's insane! but people are willing to use it because there is almost no other way of getting the product they want.

Take the legislative risk out of handling those types of transactions, and shit like this will disappear.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#234
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…

Speaking from experience, of all 3 major US card networks, I consider Visa the most advanced in terms of their tech.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#235

Plaid's product is absolutely absurd. Yes, please train your users to type their username and passwords into third party sites because they're given a legitimate looking sign-in box. US Banking infrastructure is so hopelessly bad that this is hack of a business is considered legitimate fin-tech. My wallet was stolen and before I realized it was gone and could cancel my CCs some dude made like six obviously fraudulent…

Every time Plaid is mentioned on HN, people want to hate. My take is: don't use it if you're scared ?

A few of my friends were talking about Plaid the other day, and I told them I like the company/product, but "many people on HN hate it." They were perplexed and when I explained it was because you guys were nervous about entering your bank password into a third-party (yet reputable) company's interface (that's encrypted), they wrote it off as "being paranoid." Can't say I disagree...

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#236
post #228
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IPO is a taxable event. You’re taxed at the IPO price, and your company should withhold shares based on that price. After whatever lockup you have some fraction of shares remaining. When you sell those and if the price is greater than the IPO price then you have capital gains on whatever shares you still hold. You still owe tax from the IPO. My point is the company will withhold shares from you, but you might nee…

The IPO is not a taxable event.

It's income, which in the USA is generally taxable.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#238
post #194
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was taxed at the time of my grant, and then again on the gain when I sell. Had I put them in a self directed IRA i could have bypassed 6 figures of cap gains tax.

You can’t contribute in-kind to an IRA.

Actually that’s a great point. Depending on your company and your role in the company I’m sure there are ways to get around that, but that would require your company to play ball and get creative with you.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#239
post #235

Plaid's product is absolutely absurd. Yes, please train your users to type their username and passwords into third party sites because they're given a legitimate looking sign-in box. US Banking infrastructure is so hopelessly bad that this is hack of a business is considered legitimate fin-tech. My wallet was stolen and before I realized it was gone and could cancel my CCs some dude made like six obviously fraudulent…

Every time Plaid is mentioned on HN, people want to hate. My take is: don't use it if you're scared ? A few of my friends were talking about Plaid the other day, and I told them I like the company/product, but "many people on HN hate it." They were perplexed and when I explained it was because you guys were nervous about entering your bank password into a third-party (yet reputable) company's interface (that's encryp…

I've never used plaid, but in Germany there's a (I guess) similar service, Sofortüberweisung.

My problem with these services is not that I don't trust them - I know how bad banking IT is, they can't be much worse. What bothers me, is that they teach users that it's okay to enter your credentials into third party sites, a recipe for disaster.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#240
post #235

Plaid's product is absolutely absurd. Yes, please train your users to type their username and passwords into third party sites because they're given a legitimate looking sign-in box. US Banking infrastructure is so hopelessly bad that this is hack of a business is considered legitimate fin-tech. My wallet was stolen and before I realized it was gone and could cancel my CCs some dude made like six obviously fraudulent…

Every time Plaid is mentioned on HN, people want to hate. My take is: don't use it if you're scared ? A few of my friends were talking about Plaid the other day, and I told them I like the company/product, but "many people on HN hate it." They were perplexed and when I explained it was because you guys were nervous about entering your bank password into a third-party (yet reputable) company's interface (that's encryp…

Saying the company interface is encrypted so it's safe shows how effective this attack can be. One of the attacks would present you with a login box. You thin this is plaid and it is encrypted so it's safe so you enter your username/password. It turns out to be a different third party. Not to worry the hacker interface is encrypted as well. Another attack surface opened up involves data breaches at plaid where company employee dumps access to everyone.

It is probably the one thing you can do today that will at some point cause you lose money from your bank account.

It is not even paranoid. It's a bad idea to leave your bank access codes with someone else.

The less people understand how things work the more likely they are to trust it. This just opens up a new avenue for exploitation.

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