Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#141

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, May 06, 2022, 8:58 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #73

rabidonrails wrote: post #26

I think that people underestimate what this feels like for the Plaid founder and potentially for Patrick too. For Plaid you've spent your life building this business. Presumably there are many happy customers and you're working really hard to define the space and provide service. One morning you flip on your laptop and see a headline that one of your customers (and competitors) launched a new service that directly co…

Plaid is a huge company with a CEO who is presumably a professional adult. Making sarcastic, whiny commends on Twitter should be beneath him. He just sounds like a child throwing a tantrum because a company decided to compete with him. Not saying he shouldn't feel bad, or threatened, or upset -- those are perfectly valid feelings to have -- but airing those feelings like that is unprofessional and, frankly, pretty la…

> sarcastic, whiny commends on Twitter should be beneath him. He just sounds like a child throwing a tantrum

The problem is it looks like someone who feels they've been beaten. Twitter tantrums are precedented and tolerated for Silicon Valley CEOs at this point.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#142

Post by pbreit » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

eins1234 wrote: post #91

A lot of comments here saying that this is the death knell for Plaid, but I wouldn't be so sure. Stripe has launched competitors to existing fintech products and failed to gain traction plenty of times before. Example: Remember the Stripe Corporate Card? It was "launched" as invite-only 3 years ago and is still invite only today, with little signs of traction. Meanwhile both Brex and Ramp have become decacorns throug…

There will be plenty of users (skewing large) who will want to get account validation and payment processing from different vendors.

I wonder if this opens up a Visa acquisition?

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#143

Post by sbierwagen » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

anon_3b4150 wrote: post #124

sbierwagen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>telling a third party that they should not do a hybrid Stripe + my_old_company solution because our product couldn't support the use case. To be clear, are you complaining about salesmen at a competitor lying to close a sale? Are you also unhappy about water being wet, or bears shitting in the woods?

No, that is not what happened. We were partnering with Stripe on a deal that we originated. They verbally agreed to terms. They then lied about our abilities. So we cut Stripe out, got the deal, and moved on. The point isn't that competition exists; the point is that Stripe will say one thing and do another. If this is how you live your life, fine, but many people would like to know that Stripe has a history of bad b…

>We were partnering with Stripe on a deal that we originated.

So... a sale? The Stripe staff you were working with were from the sales department?

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#144

Post by neither_color » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #53

cobbal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I hate plaid is that they are training people to hand over bank passwords/2fa tokens to 3rd parties. And sometimes there are no alternatives available to the consumer.

What you hate is not really Plaid but banks for not providing APIs. Banking data is too juicy to ignore, so when banks don't provide APIs of course companies will resort to MITMing.

I hate fintech apps for demanding information that's none of their business. I can't make an ACH payment on Paypal without giving them my bank login. It was an arbitrary requirement that Paypal started imposing after using the same account for years, now I simply don't use Paypal. On Cashapp, I can't withdraw via ACH unless I share my bank login(so I have to pay for "instant transfer to debit" instead. Apple Pay is my p2p of choice now because they don't engage in this nonsense, and I only deal with others on the rare occasion that someone can only pay me with one of the aforementioned abusive services.

I would be OK with Plaid if they let you manage what you share with apps via permission management.

For example: If fintech app wants to make sure I have $500 to send to my friend, I should be able to tell Plaid NOT to share my entire transaction history and it should simply give said app a binary "sufficient/insufficient" balance. No institution should get to look through my transaction history without having a damn good reason. No, I won't give companies the benefit of the doubt in our "ask for forgiveness not permission" tech culture. Assume that any information gathered about you will be monetized or used against you.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#145

Post by pbreit » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #138

SpikedCola wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that absolutely blows my mind. The bank's terms of service say you can't hand over your password to anyone, and here is Plaid asking users for their login information! I can't understand how they can ask users to breach terms of service, and have gotten so far.

Why isn't it done through a proper API that you grant them a token for? And how do Plaid bypass your bank's per-login 2FA if they're logging in as is they were a user?

Because not many banks have such an API.

Plaid just relays the 2FA question.

I think websites would have a tough time preventing users from sharing username/password. It would certainly be acceptable in a power of attorney situation.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#146

Post by spiffytech » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

vsareto wrote: post #42

echelon wrote: post #14

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like Stripe just nuked the whole of Plaid's platform and value proposition from orbit. Plaid just went from a decacorn to a cheap acquisition target for PayPal, Square, Shopify, etc. I can understand this being absolutely gut wrenching for the founders and early employees that are still on board. It must feel like having tangible dreams crushed. Not as bad as a cancer diagnosis,…

>Not as bad as a cancer diagnosis, but certainly worse than a rejection from your dream school. We leave rich, but maybe not-as-rich as we thought?

That depends on their cap table and exit. In some high dollar exits even the founders don't make any money, because the sale price was too low to pay out anything but investors' preferred shares.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#147

Post by darkerside » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #111

darkerside wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition is going to come whether you like it or not. You can whine about it, or you can use it as a tool to push yourself to be better. rchaud find this to be a platitude, but frankly, I don't give a shit what he thinks. If I'm a good CEO, I care much more about how my employees react to the new competition than to how this internet rando feels about my public response.

Speaking of effective communication, I don't think your tone effectively persuades skeptical listeners. You are on a forum of Internet randos, having a polite discussion.

That was a bit of a gambit on my part. Operating as an internet rando myself, I knew I didn't need to communicate like a CEO. In fact, I calculated that my message would distance myself from typical CEO-speak, imbuing myself with a bit of anti-authoritarian branding that might actually appeal to the people who least understood my first message.

You're probably right that there are some fence sitters who were put off by that aggressive follow up. I hope they can judge the initial comment on its own merits, and challenge or ask for clarification if it's helpful.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#148

Post by pbreit » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

kbos87 wrote: post #33

I don’t know all the specifics of the interaction that happened here, but the hard truth is that if you aren’t eventually expecting this to happen to your business - regardless of the space you are in - you aren’t being realistic about the nature of competition in SaaS. Plaid has enjoyed years of life without much direct competition. My hunch is that few other businesses were interested in the space because it feels…

Well, Yodlee & Finicity pre-dated Plaid by many years. But Plaid executed much better.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#149

Post by jonny_eh » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #132

collectedparts wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: I think you meant "I don't think anyone would dispute that it's a blow". Saying "I don't think anyone would argue that X" means "I don't think anyone thinks X".

I think his phrasing is also grammatical English. The degree to which it sounds right or wrong is probably idiomatic. "it's a blow to the chest for Plaid" is a coherent phrase "I don't think anyone would argue that" is a coherent phrase that contains a pronoun, "that." The antecedent of this pronoun is that first phrase. I don't think anyone would argue X can mean the statement X is so true nobody would argue it. An…

> is so true nobody would argue it.

You mean: is so true nobody would argue AGAINST it.

The ambiguity is whether argue means FOR or AGAINST.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#150

Post by pbreit » Fri, May 06, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #50

rabidonrails wrote: post #26

I think that people underestimate what this feels like for the Plaid founder and potentially for Patrick too. For Plaid you've spent your life building this business. Presumably there are many happy customers and you're working really hard to define the space and provide service. One morning you flip on your laptop and see a headline that one of your customers (and competitors) launched a new service that directly co…

I don't think anyone would argue that it's a blow to the chest for Plaid. But, that's business. Plaid has raised $700m+ and is valued $10+ billion according to Wikipedia. This move by Stripe is absolutely one that any competent leadership team should have expected would happen sooner or later.

Especially since Stripe indicated exactly what it was doing via RFP.