Does anyone know if such a thing exists in Europe?
There is Bankin[0] which I believe shares a few similarities, however it mostly works with French bank accounts for now.
Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
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Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#12Does anyone know if such a thing exists in Europe?
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Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#13Does anyone know if such a thing exists in Europe?
The original one (expensive):
https://www.yodlee.com/yodlee/europe-africa
UK startups:
Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#14There's been a whistleblower or two on HN about how Plaid scapes and sells your bank account transaction history to third parties. It seems more unethical than most selling-user-data strategies in that the users don't even know Plaid is involved in the transaction whatsoever ; they're just a hidden middle layer. I'd be interested to know if this is still part of their monetization strategy, or if anyone at Plaid can…
Co-founder of Plaid here. This is not true, we do not sell transactional data to third parties. We make 100% of our money by letting developers build financial applications[1].
Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#15There's been a whistleblower or two on HN about how Plaid scapes and sells your bank account transaction history to third parties. It seems more unethical than most selling-user-data strategies in that the users don't even know Plaid is involved in the transaction whatsoever ; they're just a hidden middle layer. I'd be interested to know if this is still part of their monetization strategy, or if anyone at Plaid can…
It’s the Facebook API issue but IMO transaction data is much more sensitive so it’s a bigger issue. I have used the Plaid API and have no idea how they audit developers to make sure they are using the data as intended and storing that data securely.
One hack incident of a developer that exposes bank numbers and transaction data would be a huge reputational hit.
Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#16Does anyone know if such a thing exists in Europe?
I hope not, because its such a shitshow. You literally give your bank credentials to a third party who then logs in to your account and scrapes info off of it - info that you have no control over.
Capital One was smart enough to block them off (which is the bank I use), and now they actually provide proper OAuth based APIs to access your account.
Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#17There's been a whistleblower or two on HN about how Plaid scapes and sells your bank account transaction history to third parties. It seems more unethical than most selling-user-data strategies in that the users don't even know Plaid is involved in the transaction whatsoever ; they're just a hidden middle layer. I'd be interested to know if this is still part of their monetization strategy, or if anyone at Plaid can…
Co-founder of Plaid here. This is not true, we do not sell transactional data to third parties. We make 100% of our money by letting developers build financial applications[1]. [1] - https://plaid.com/pricing/
And just to point out, there are others that do sell this as part of their business model, so kudos to Plaid for trying to find another way.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2018/07/22/mastercar... (Another "Forbes Contributor" article, so grain of salt on the details)
Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#18The billion-dollar battle to share your personal financial information to even more unaccountable third parties.
Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#19There's been a whistleblower or two on HN about how Plaid scapes and sells your bank account transaction history to third parties. It seems more unethical than most selling-user-data strategies in that the users don't even know Plaid is involved in the transaction whatsoever ; they're just a hidden middle layer. I'd be interested to know if this is still part of their monetization strategy, or if anyone at Plaid can…
Co-founder of Plaid here. This is not true, we do not sell transactional data to third parties. We make 100% of our money by letting developers build financial applications[1]. [1] - https://plaid.com/pricing/
Thanks William, and sorry for the wrong accusation. Super embarrassed; I read so many comments on that thread I must've conflated two.
Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation
#20I'm interested to see where this goes. I use Plaid as a developer, and it feels like the user experience keeps getting worse. This isn't Plaid's fault, but as more and more financial institutions require 2FA, it gets much less automatic for Plaid to scrape data.
Instead of just seeing updated transactions, users frequently need to enter a 2FA code before Plaid can successfully complete the update. This is very clunky, especially if you've linked 10+ accounts. Hopefully, Plaid (or even government regulations) will be able to encourage banks to create real APIs and Plaid can move away from scraping entirely.