Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

justice.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 295 posts

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#31

Post by roflc0ptic »

garyrichardson wrote: post #25
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

Whatever you think about Visa or this merger, this would be a major disappoint to Plaid's team members who thought they were in for a huge financial windfall. If that applies to anyone here, my sympathies and best of luck figuring out what's next for Plaid. Hopefully the morale hit isn't too big on the team.

Agreed, except for one point. Please don't call it a windfall. Anyone in that company that would have seen life changing amounts of money has likely put incredible effort and hard work into making this happen.

I mean, nobody reasonably joins a startup and expects to make buku bucks. It’s “unexpected good fortune” from my perspective, and certainly seems to qualify as a windfall.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#32

Post by toomuchtodo »

runako wrote: post #26
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a hack around regulatory failure to mandate this functionality at finance firms (both Congress and the Fed have failed in this regard). The Fed's instant payments product (FedNow [1]) goes live in 2023, which is going to put downward pressure on Visa's debit business. The Fed only began to move on instant payments when pressured by Congress [2] (who didn't want smaller banks held hostage by Early Warning System…

Does FedNow solve all of the problems Plaid solves? I'm thinking specifically about Plaid functionality that lets consumers expose transaction history, investments, etc. It would appear that FedNow solves for "How do I get money into my Schwab brokerage account?" but not "How can I let Schwab do risk analysis across all my investment accounts?"

It does not, which is why I mention Europe's PSD2, which would. You don't build a startup to do this, you mandate your financial institutions to provide this functionality to users.

Baby steps!

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#34

Post by throwawayacct8 »

jamestimmins wrote: post #5

Whatever you think about Visa or this merger, this would be a major disappoint to Plaid's team members who thought they were in for a huge financial windfall. If that applies to anyone here, my sympathies and best of luck figuring out what's next for Plaid. Hopefully the morale hit isn't too big on the team.

Can attest that some employees and ex-employees took a decent tax hit by exercising NSOs after the acquisition was announced at the $5.3 valuation price.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#35

Post by supernova87a »

garyrichardson wrote: post #25
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

Whatever you think about Visa or this merger, this would be a major disappoint to Plaid's team members who thought they were in for a huge financial windfall. If that applies to anyone here, my sympathies and best of luck figuring out what's next for Plaid. Hopefully the morale hit isn't too big on the team.

Agreed, except for one point. Please don't call it a windfall. Anyone in that company that would have seen life changing amounts of money has likely put incredible effort and hard work into making this happen.

Well, maybe it isn't a "windfall" to someone who lives in the tech world and comes to expect such good fortune and thinks their effort should be rewarded in an outsized way. I'm sure we think it's deserved in a relative sense.

But it is most definitely a windfall to the rest of the world (even the rest of the country), who work equally hard, under worse conditions, for their entire lives and cannot even hope to earn say 1/5 the wealth that a tech worker can accumulate after his/her first job.

To have a payday of millions of $ fall out of the sky, for toiling the same as others trying to make a living, yet also being lucky to be in the right place and the right time to have it rewarded.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#36

Post by nceqs3 »

vinhboy wrote: post #12

It is still called a "merger" if one company is buying out another company. Don't we normally call that an acquisition?

There is no legal process of an "acquisition". When somebody says acquisition they really mean reverse triangular merger.

See https://witnesseth.typepad.com/blog/reverse-triangular-merge...

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#37

Post by Operyl »

AlexandrB wrote: post #28
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

Whatever you think about Visa or this merger, this would be a major disappoint to Plaid's team members who thought they were in for a huge financial windfall. If that applies to anyone here, my sympathies and best of luck figuring out what's next for Plaid. Hopefully the morale hit isn't too big on the team.

This comment strikes a nerve with me - perhaps because it's "saying the quiet part loud". I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups was to "change the world" and "make a difference". How does selling to Visa accomplish those things? Isn't expressing sympathy with Plaid's staff for not getting a payout effectively saying "sorry that you might actually have to deliver on the lofty promises this time"? It's als…

To be fair, Visa would’ve had the partnerships with banks to really push for standard API access to various banks. Plaid works by giving them your username and password in most flows (although some banks like Chase finally have an authorization flow without MITM).

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#38

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

AlexandrB wrote: post #28
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

Whatever you think about Visa or this merger, this would be a major disappoint to Plaid's team members who thought they were in for a huge financial windfall. If that applies to anyone here, my sympathies and best of luck figuring out what's next for Plaid. Hopefully the morale hit isn't too big on the team.

This comment strikes a nerve with me - perhaps because it's "saying the quiet part loud". I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups was to "change the world" and "make a difference". How does selling to Visa accomplish those things? Isn't expressing sympathy with Plaid's staff for not getting a payout effectively saying "sorry that you might actually have to deliver on the lofty promises this time"? It's als…

The rank-and-file employees that work for companies like this have other goals, like buying houses and saving for retirement, it's not a single dimension. Yes, they want to help the world but not at the expense of themselves and their own financial future.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#39

Post by schnable »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
ryanwhitney wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like oauth except you type your password for site A into a box on site B’s domain Pretty wild it even exists

It is a hack around regulatory failure to mandate this functionality at finance firms (both Congress and the Fed have failed in this regard). The Fed's instant payments product (FedNow [1]) goes live in 2023, which is going to put downward pressure on Visa's debit business. The Fed only began to move on instant payments when pressured by Congress [2] (who didn't want smaller banks held hostage by Early Warning System…

You'd think even without a mandate, banks would be motivated to implement secure auth instead of this insanity?
Post reply on HN