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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

#281

Post by esotericimpl »

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

Their engineering team is so terrible. They implemented race conditions that caused their end users to receive data that didn't belong to the underlying account that they had connected.

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

#283

Post by ska »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #220
ska wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some startups have no technical founders even. And most technical founders aren't hackers, though some definitely are.

How would you describe a hacker vs your average dev?

Lots of people have tried to capture this distinction, I'm sure I'll do a worse job here briefly than you can find around, but for me the tell is how people spend their time, and an attitude.

Hackers in the sense that I mean it have an innate need to understand things deeply, and a tendency to value achieving this directly (e.g. do something, don't just read up about it). As a result most hackers with any real talent will have achieved an unusually high level of expertise/mastery in at least one, often a few, technical areas. This is a result of having really spent a lot of time with it, in ways that may look "obsessive" to others.

This is by no means restricted to software. Another common characteristic is a tendency to take things apart (physically or virtually) to see how they tick.

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

#284

Post by Nextgrid »

Nursie wrote: post #270
Nextgrid wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, considering it doesn't enforce a single, consistent API, so most companies will still use something like TrueLayer (our local equivalent of Plaid) to aggregate all these separate APIs into a single consistent one. Furthermore, "open" banking is very misleading because it's only open to corporations with deep pockets to obtain an AISP license/certification*, but doesn't even allow the account holder to gai…

Yes, it's only 'open' to FCA registered entities, which is an entirely reasonable requirement given how easy it is for scammers to get people to give away the keys to the kingdom. So no, it wouldn't have been nicer, it would have been a scammers delight. And yes, it does require a consistent API, thought it's perhaps open to a bit too much interpretation.

> given how easy it is for scammers to get people to give away the keys to the kingdom

Restricting API access doesn't help. There are plenty of idiots out there who willingly install remote access software on their computers/phones, fall for "authorized push payment" fraud when scammers tell them to move their money to a "safe account" or to pay overdue "taxes" (gullibility taxes?) over the phone and even use the two-factor card readers despite the "do not use over the phone" text being printed right on them.

I'm not sure how read-only API access would benefit scammers (if people can be tricked into granting API access, they will usually just as well install remote access software or just do the payments manually) but it would open up a nice field of self-contained, on-device money management apps that don't need significant corporate (most likely VC) backing with all the (usually) nasty ramifications that entails.

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

#285

Post by Nextgrid »

ethangk wrote: post #264
Nextgrid wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, considering it doesn't enforce a single, consistent API, so most companies will still use something like TrueLayer (our local equivalent of Plaid) to aggregate all these separate APIs into a single consistent one. Furthermore, "open" banking is very misleading because it's only open to corporations with deep pockets to obtain an AISP license/certification*, but doesn't even allow the account holder to gai…

> Not really, considering it doesn't enforce a single, consistent API, so most companies will still use something like TrueLayer (our local equivalent of Plaid) to aggregate all these separate APIs into a single consistent one. That's not quite true. The CMA9 have to follow the Open Banking spec, and some other non-cma9 banks have decided to follow the same spec. In practise, there's some deviation from the spec betw…

> I think it's Do you have any more details? If this is indeed the price and it's a one-time cost without costly maintenance overheads (such as ongoing audits) I might just pay that to be able to release simple money management or just better UIs than the existing banks (even modern bank's apps have gotten worse lately as they try to push their "premium" offerings - looking at Monzo specifically here).

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

#286

Post by rconti »

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?

I joined a company (my first full-time salaried job) a few days before their IPO. I got stock options (like, 500. I was 18. heh.) but they were awarded/priced/etc post-IPO and were never actually in the money after vesting, as I recall. So I remember some of the IPO excitement but I'm not sure it really qualifies as "going through an IPO" for the purposes of the "full thrill ride package".

Incidentally, that company was also taken private during the dot-com crash, and I did make money from that, because the ESPP I was buying for <$1 got converted to cash at something like 3.5x the valuation. It wasn't much, but, again, I was young, so it seemed like a lot.

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

#287

Post by Nursie »

Nextgrid wrote: post #259
jsinai wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works in the UK where open banking is regulated by the FCA: https://www.openbanking.org.uk/customers/what-is-open-bankin...

It doesn't really work. Open Banking doesn't seem to enforce a consistent API which means you either need to implement a client for each bank (and their data model) individually or use something like Plaid (in the UK our equivalent is TrueLayer) to aggregate all the different banks into a single API.

This is just not true, for Open Banking in the UK. API standards are published and banks must implement them.

There was a get-out, but it was a bad one for the banks - if any bank did not provide a compliant API by a specific date (IIRC sometime last year) then they would have to keep their web sites entirely unaltered in order to support scraping.

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

#288

Post by Nursie »

Nextgrid wrote: post #284
Nursie wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's only 'open' to FCA registered entities, which is an entirely reasonable requirement given how easy it is for scammers to get people to give away the keys to the kingdom. So no, it wouldn't have been nicer, it would have been a scammers delight. And yes, it does require a consistent API, thought it's perhaps open to a bit too much interpretation.

> given how easy it is for scammers to get people to give away the keys to the kingdom Restricting API access doesn't help. There are plenty of idiots out there who willingly install remote access software on their computers/phones, fall for "authorized push payment" fraud when scammers tell them to move their money to a "safe account" or to pay overdue "taxes" (gullibility taxes?) over the phone and even use the two…

> I'm not sure how read-only API access would benefit scammer

Information leaks are always useful to scammers, extortionists, blackmailers etc. It's one reason we protect financial info.

Like the other poster said, VC money isn't really needed, though the process of getting accredited with the FCA is more than just paying for a license. The Open Banking Implementation Entity (or just Open Banking Ltd, whatever they're calling themselves at the moment) may be able to help you go through the accreditation process if you approach them, they were certainly talking about doing that for people a couple of years back.

And before that you can sign up to their public sandbox service as a "Technical Service Provider" to start developing against the ecosystem, for nothing (I've done this though I've not really used the capability for anything).(You may need a Ltd company for this, can't remember off the top of my head)

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

#289

Post by tallneil »

sshah1983 wrote: post #54

My guess is that that Plaid will go public via a SPAC deal now. I think it's highly likely GSAH (Goldman Sachs Acquisition Holdings) is that SPAC that does a deal. They have $750M to play with and given Visa was going to buy Plaid for $5.3B, the numbers kind of make sense.

Yeah I think this is a strong take.

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

#290

Post by cbsks »

tazard wrote: post #273
o-__-o wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

READ: https://plaid.com/legal/#consumers

Any chance you could point me to something more specific? From your link I found this: > We do not sell or rent personal information that we collect.

“We may collect, use, and share End User Information in an aggregated, de-identified, or anonymized manner (that does not identify you personally) for any purpose permitted under applicable law.”
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