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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

#241

Post by spurdoman77 »

tadfisher wrote: post #145
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…

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…

> 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:

That is never going to work. The reason the world works the way it works is because banks dont want to give easy access, so market opportunity for companies like Plaid exists.

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

#242

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#243

Post by matt_kantor »

odiroot wrote: post #238
CamelCaseName wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a poor comment from Kelly that I almost wonder if it was intentional.

But is it securities fraud?

Everything is securities fraud.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

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

#244

Post by Hydraulix989 »

tadfisher wrote: post #145
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…

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…

The fact that the Markdown URL format cloaks URLs is user-hostile.

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

#245

Post by cblconfederate »

tyre wrote: post #130
cblconfederate wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if tax is part of the smart contract?

then it would have to know who it is taxing? The same applies. No, you cannot anonymously tax every transaction at some rate. Tax rates don't work that way, in a vacuum.

why not. it's how sales tax works

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

#246

Post by cblconfederate »

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…

Looks like tech is the new finance

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

#247

Post by gjulianm »

kripy wrote: post #169
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…

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/

The fact is pretty much hidden. I tried to link my Toshl (a budget app) account to my bank, to import automatically my movements. I saw that they were using Plaid, and I found that weird. I went to search the page you linked, and I still didn't know how was it connecting to my bank. I used an "application password" with limited permissions from my bank to use with Plaid, and funnily enough it didn't work. In fact, my bank locked my account because Plaid tried to login through the regular user interface with a wrong password several times. It was only then when I saw in forums and such that what Plaid does is to scrape HTML.

When you use Plaid, you don't get the impression that's what they're doing. We're used to dialogs to "give permissions to an app" that don't share our user/password with anybody. Plaid purposefully emulates those dialogs and gives you the impression that you're just logging in with your bank, instead of explicitly telling you "we will store your user and password and use that to log-i with your bank".

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

#248

Post by Veen »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #244
tadfisher wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fact that the Markdown URL format cloaks URLs is user-hostile.

Markdown doesn’t cloak URLs; HTML does. We seem fine with that on every other webpage.

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

#249

Post by Cederfjard »

milesskorpen wrote: post #237
throwaway9980 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fortunately, Plaid doesn’t sell your transaction history, so this isn’t a concern.

Going by what was posted further up in the thread, that seems to be what TD Bank alleges in their suit?

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

#250

Post by jsinai »

spurdoman77 wrote: post #241
tadfisher wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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: That is never going to work. The reason the world works the way it works is because banks dont want to give easy access, so market opportunity for companies like Plaid exists.

It works in the UK where open banking is regulated by the FCA:

https://www.openbanking.org.uk/customers/what-is-open-bankin...

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