Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think Plaid founders are going to jail?
No. He specifically implied that they would become billionaires instead of going to jail.
It's sad that we award unscrupulous behavior.
Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
181–190 of 295 posts
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#182Important to note that there is no break-up fee that Visa (or Plaid) will pay. Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2021/01/12/vis...
Nice pt. This is common as merger deals typically have MACs that carve out specific events like failure to get antitrust approval...
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#183I'm not exactly surprised. Plaid is the worst of both worlds, a janky ass tech that's just waiting for the first major security breach to cause a huge problem for their users combined with the fact that they're the only real choice in the space.
I do 90% of my transactions through CC partially because Visa/Mastercards tech is at least within the last decade (ex: Visa rails) as opposed to the debit networks. That combined with the added consumer protections you get from using CC over debit makes it a no brainer.
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#184Glad to see they're starting to flex that antitrust muscle a little bit, it's been atrifying over the past few decades.
* atrophying
But yes, and this is a taste of what's to come. FB, GOOG, AMZN... watch out.
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#185I'm surprised by this. I used to work in Foster City. The joke on the campus was that VISA stood for "Very Inconspicuous Spy Agency". You'd think that there wouldn't be this kind of miscommunication in the chain of command. All jokes aside, I'm very curious to check out Plaid now because I didn't pay attention when it was independent and Visa is a *very* smart organization, so Plaid must be something special.
Special in that their technical approach is horrible, but viable because who they let you talk to are worse.
They're going to have a breach at some point and it'll be legendary.
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man I can't believe they actually pulled this on a Canadian Bank. I tell my founders to always always fly straight or don't fly at all because if you cut corners or deceive, it will come back to you. Had they been honest and played by the rules they could be sitting on a massive windfall. Unfortunately, some VCs and founders think like gangsters and get surprised when things dont plan out. Just because it worked f…
Yeah. TD is so tired of them they have a page warning customers about them, without naming names: > When using a fintech app, you may be providing your confidential TD username and password directly to third parties over whom TD has no control. Please be aware that the sharing of your TD credentials is contrary to the terms of our agreements, and TD will not be responsible for any harm that results from the sharing o…
TD should force a password reset every time a login occurs from Plaid on behalf of a user.
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, giving your credentials to any third party, including Plaid, voids the warranty at many financial institutions. If your account gets hacked and your money stolen, you may find out that the zero liability policy no longer applies to you. The trouble is, giving someone your account number also makes it not the bank's problem what they do with that number, even if it was clearly unauthorized by you. There's no g…
I don't buy this. If I give someone a check (which has an account number on it) that doesn't mean they get to withdraw whatever they want from my bank account. What bank in the U.S. wont reverse fraudulent ACH debits?
handing out your login credentials is like giving a blanko check with your signature on it already.
> What bank in the U.S. wont reverse fraudulent ACH debits?
If you admit to handing out signed blank checks, I would hope that most if not all banks would at least have a discussion with you about how you may be not the customer they are looking for.
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am sure I will be called naive, but this is shocking to me. I assumed that Plaid was integrating with the banks and not doing this sort of thing because of the people associated with Plaid. Their seed round included Spark Capital and Google Ventures. Their most recent round included Mary Meeker and Andreessen Horowitz. [1] These investors have reputations to protect. This type of thing would certainly come out in d…
I'm surprised, because Plaid is far from the first mover in the "scraped banking data API" space. Mint (now Intuit) and Yodlee come to mind, and they use essentially the same sign-in flow and come with the same limitations. There are organizations and companies that are trying to do this legitimately, through open standards and real incentives to both FIs and customers to share information in exchanges: - Open Bankin…
You're right, they aren't the first. That said, when I use accounting software, it's pretty obvious to me that I am going to be sharing my transaction history with the accounting software. When I connect my bank account to Venmo, it is absolutely not obvious to me that I'm sharing my entire transaction history with Plaid. Replicating the appearance of my bank's login screens is critical to the illusion.
Even if I did understand that they are storing and using my credentials, I should be able to expect from a reputable business that they are not scraping irrelevant transaction data and then using it for purposes that don't explicitly support the app I am using. Selling my transaction history definitely isn't supporting the use case I'm authorizing.
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#189Whatever 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.
Uh no. Plaid is probably worth much more now than it was when it was acquired. The entire market has become much more frothy. I would not be surprised if it could command a $10B+ valuation as a standalone company.
That doesn't mean much unless the employees have liquidity right? Presumably after the acquisition the employees would've been able to convert their options to cold hard cash.
Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is true, and Plaid makes pretty explicit claims that they do not do this, i.e.: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18655417 - https://plaid.com/how-we-handle-data/
That was 2018 though when they were barely setting up.
And still the case from what I've heard.