81–90 of 143 posts
They actively reached out to me because of an open source project I created and they wanted to recruit me. They made quite an impression on me but I wasn't prepared to move to the US back then. Damn. Missed opportunity. Obviously they were very proactive in reaching out to the developers that they wanted rather than just passively waiting for resumes to flow in.
Also a risk, because any bank could simply shut this down pretty quickly and if one does it, the others could follow.
The first 3rd party that messes up, with the whiff of a scandal ... and this is going to dissapear, or rather, the banks may decided that they'll do some API, but not for free.
I'm waiting for 'Cambridge Analytica' but with your money this time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have my own issues with Plaid, but I think you’re reaching a bit here. Everything Plaid does is opt in by the end user. They’re not selling data unbeknownst to the user (assuming co-founder above is being genuine), the user is giving another service permission to use their data. As for bank logins...that’s been around since long before Plaid. But I agree there must be a better way. Though I don’t have any great pra…
Do users have any idea exactly what they're giving up here though? Do they have fine-grained permissions to allow read-only vs write access, and to choose between transaction and account level data? And is there anything that prevents those second-party developers from then turning around and selling data to third parties (besides their own TOS with Plaid)?
Plaid is a great idea, but the implementation worries me. My understanding is that, for most banks, you give Plaid your username and password, and Plaid scrapers on their servers log into your online banking account. Even worse, Plaid obfuscates this behavior from users by replicating their banks login window and making it appear that you are logging directly into your bank. I'm not sure how to feel about this, becau…
It always blew my mind that services like Yodlee ( https://www.yodlee.com ) worked that way. I can understand it from the point of view that no traditional bank was set up to allow structured access but it never felt right to me. In the UK there is a big push around "open banking"[1] which will bring this into the 21st century and allow for proper programmatic access to data. It's still in it's infancy but the sector…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/
Hi William, how does your statement fit with the fact that one of your products is literally selling transactional data? https://plaid.com/products/transactions While I'll assume this is only of the customers of a particular product, it is still worrying as many customers may not understand that fact as you are not transparent about your role and the access granted.
Plaid is a great idea, but the implementation worries me. My understanding is that, for most banks, you give Plaid your username and password, and Plaid scrapers on their servers log into your online banking account. Even worse, Plaid obfuscates this behavior from users by replicating their banks login window and making it appear that you are logging directly into your bank. I'm not sure how to feel about this, becau…
It always blew my mind that services like Yodlee ( https://www.yodlee.com ) worked that way. I can understand it from the point of view that no traditional bank was set up to allow structured access but it never felt right to me. In the UK there is a big push around "open banking"[1] which will bring this into the 21st century and allow for proper programmatic access to data. It's still in it's infancy but the sector…
https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/cyberlex/open-bank...
Plaid is a great idea, but the implementation worries me. My understanding is that, for most banks, you give Plaid your username and password, and Plaid scrapers on their servers log into your online banking account. Even worse, Plaid obfuscates this behavior from users by replicating their banks login window and making it appear that you are logging directly into your bank. I'm not sure how to feel about this, becau…
Not a Plaid user, but I believe Mint works the same way. It seems to only decrypt my bank credentials with a key derived from my session password, so I suspect Plaid, if what you say is correct, do something similar. Basically, my password is hashed to see if I can log on. Then it's passed through a PBKDF to get the decryption key for my actual accounts, then that information gets sent to the scrapers to do the actua…
They have a great team and they're making a big push to bring PSD2 compliant banking integrations to Europe. I haven't heard of many other offerings within Europe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/
You may not sell the data but you give developer's access to bank balance, transaction history, and income streams. Essentially some of the most private aspects of a person's life. Seems legitimately useful for personal finance tools or loan providers. However, I know your API is being used by point of sale systems. Seems super unethical for point of sale systems to access any info beyond, is this the right account,…