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

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

#191

Post by milesskorpen »

f430 wrote: post #127
smnrchrds wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are getting sued by TD Bank for this very reason: > The bank said in the court filings that the interface "dupes" consumers into believing they are entering personal information into TD Bank's trusted platform. > "In reality, however, consumers are unwittingly giving their login credentials to the defendant, who takes the information, stores it on its servers, and uses it to mine consumers' bank records for valu…

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…

The deal didn't go through because of antitrust concerns, not because of TD's lawsuit.

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

#192

Post by staysaasy »

granzymes wrote: post #166
rconti wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been through 1.5 IPOs and 1 acquisition. In only one of those cases, did I join the company expecting an imminent-ish liquidity event. One hit me out of nowhere. Regardless of what you're planning on, and even if the dollar amount isn't that great, it's a huge rush, a lot of thinking about the possibilities. It would suck, at the very least, on an emotional level, to have that fall apart.

Out of curiosity, what was the .5 IPO?

She/he is probably on the way to one right now, at their current company.

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

#193

Post by morpheuskafka »

thekyle wrote: post #151
morpheuskafka wrote: post #99

Earlier 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?

It says on page 35 of my Bank of America Deposit Agreement and Disclosures:

> If you voluntarily disclose your account number to another personal orally, electronically, in writing or by other means, you are deemed to authorize each item, including electronic debits, which result from your disclosure. We may pay these items and charge your account.

It may be that there is some rule that says just giving someone a check doesn't count as "voluntarily disclosing" your account number.

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

#194

Post by lmm »

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…

> 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?

If your aim is that everyone should have access to these tools then getting Visa to integrate them is a pretty good way to accomplish that - Visa is big enough that if they adopt something then pretty much every credit card will have to match it.

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

#195

Post by justusthane »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #161
AlexandrB wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's OK to say "I'm sorry you didn't get your payday" and "your company's exploitation of my data sucks big time" to the same person.

Is it really? Getting a big payday seems to validate the exploitation of the data. Those two sentiments seem mutually exclusive to me.

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

#196

Post by dmak »

waprin wrote: post #178
kripy wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not hiding the fact. From their website [1]: "When you choose to connect your financial accounts to an app using Plaid, you will be prompted to enter the username and password associated with those accounts. Plaid then links your accounts to the app you want to use so you can share your data." [1] https://plaid.com/how-it-works-for-consumers/

Disagree, they are hiding the fact by assuming ignorance of most users. A true “link” , would use something like OAuth to have the bank handle authentication and provide explicitly scoped subset of consumer data to Plaid. Instead they are taking the plaintext password and getting total access. Just taking that passwords itself is a security vulnerability. Google doesn’t even know your Gmail password, just the hash, b…

You speak idealistically, but the reality is that many of these banks did not having open banking standards nor APIs before. The scraping led to this movement and FSAs all over the world are starting to push for no scraping while financial institutions create APIs and contracts with these platforms.

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

#197

Post by abrowne »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #179
throwaway9980 wrote: post #112

Earlier 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…

VC's actually tend to love companies that are a little bit sneaky. Just not too sneaky to have to face consequences.

"Disruptive".

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

#198

Post by [deleted] »

cameldrv wrote: post #100
smnrchrds wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the pinky promise that they will not do bad things with their access.

They are selling the data to marketing companies to build a dossier on you, and this could be used for any number of purposes once it is in the hands of data brokers. They're tricking people into handing over the information, and then they're using it for purposes that may harm the victim, so like I said, it's hard to draw a line.

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by paxys »

valtism wrote: post #147
chaorace wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think it's a data issue. He literally says they bought Plaid because they're a threat. That's textbook anti-competitive behavior and a big smoking gun when it comes to anti-trust cases.

I'm not informed when it comes to anti-competitive legislation, but don't companies like Google do this sort of thing all the time?

They do, which is why it is so surprising that the DoJ is being so aggressive with this one.

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

#200

Post by [deleted] »

seanieb wrote: post #75

I’ve some friends that works there, so I’m hesitant to say this, because I’m sorry for them, but Plaid is a terrible company. Their main product scrapes financial data from unsuspecting users that simply think they’re making a bank transfer and not signing away the privacy and security of their banking, 401k and trading information. https://twitter.com/seanieb/status/1298871471645761537?s=20

[deleted]
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