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Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

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Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#91

Post by eins1234 »

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 through crazy revenue growth.

It's not really just a Stripe thing either. I think people are way under-estimating how hard it is for a large company to launch and succeed with a product outside of their core offering, especially when the competition is a small nimble startup with a singlular focus on that one product.

Startups die all the time, for all sorts of reasons, but "large company started competing with it" is a rather rare one.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#92

Post by nazka »

pastor_bob wrote: post #61

I still find this to be rather passive aggressive. Sharing an 'internal' doc immediately...Why not call a public statement? Mention Zach deleted his tweet, but not mention what he actually said: "Deleted tweet. Misunderstanding or different styles perhaps. Presuming positive intent." All so underhanded [0] https://twitter.com/zachperret/status/1522444749877088256

I actually find him to be too defensive instead of passive aggressive. It's his job to create new products, new features, and new tools for his customers. He shouldn't be so sorry like that. Should any CEO be sorry every time they start to compete with someone else? And what about Plaid here? It's weird if you think about it. That you will have to feel sorry and go public statements and things like that to have to talk about it. Finally. Plaid should have seen that coming a long time ago. In fact I can't even imagine any of their chief officers never having to see that coming.

Edit: the classy way as an example is Airbus response to Boeing after their failure with the 747 Max or what. Now that's some clean PR well done. And they never had to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWaTjYpczKQ

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#93

Post by LegitShady »

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.

No, he dislikes the idea of handing login data over, and if your business requires someone else create an API that doesn't exist and they don't want to make, you don't have a business.

The reason they need login info is because thats the only way to get data, and a huge security risk for everyone (users, bank, and the service). Nobody is required to build an API for your financial business so it can work, and building such an api is not a small challenge in highly secure areas of business.

Personally I won't use any service like this that asks me to break my bank's TOS and hand over login information. That's honestly crazy. I'd rather build my own spreadsheets and dashboards.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#94

Post by eins1234 »

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…

Re: Plaid itself, having used some of their competitors, specifically Finicity, which is one of Stripe's partners for this, I wouldn't be too worried if I were them.

IME, Plaid is lightyears ahead in terms of reliability and overall developer and end-user experience.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#95

Post by eatonphil »

powerslacker wrote: post #58
wmf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe attempting to devour the entire financial stack should not have come as any surprise; their strategy is by now obvious from the long list of features they've launched over their history.

Seems like they pull a stunt like this every year.

> pull a stunt

You mean growing their business?

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#96

Post by darkerside »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #86
darkerside wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are literally paid to deal with these emotions constructively. In this case, that would have looked like welcoming a competitor to the space and being ready to win on execution, because ideas are free.

Ideas are not free. Good execution is better than good ideas alone, true. But ideas can definitely be worth a lot.

Any sufficiently good idea is really hard to communicate but really easy to demonstrate. That means you get a head start, but the next person gets it for free. That head start is your time to build a business with a moat. If you haven't done it by then, the next person will.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#97

Post by cobbal »

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.

Sure, banks are also to blame for it. But I also don't think that excuses Plaid at all.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#98

Post by darkerside »

unethical_ban wrote: post #77
eli wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say? Making it personal I don't think helps anyone.

I get the CEO speak, but I think rchaud is saying "no one welcomes competition - everyone wants a monopoly and to make as much money as possible". So saying otherwise sounds like garbage. People only "want competition" in the manner of controlled opposition, where they know they can beat someone.

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.

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#99

Post by sbierwagen »

anon_3b4150 wrote: post #27

I have dealt with Stripe as a partner for my last three companies, and I do not trust them. The core team was A+ and very reasonable, but the non-core folks would regularly lie and misrepresent themselves. I have to be careful about examples because I don't want blowback to my colleagues, but here's one: telling a third party that they should not do a hybrid Stripe + my_old_company solution because our product couldn…

>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?

Re: Stripe responds to the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle

#100

Post by Aeolun »

eins1234 wrote: post #94
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…

Re: Plaid itself, having used some of their competitors, specifically Finicity, which is one of Stripe's partners for this, I wouldn't be too worried if I were them. IME, Plaid is lightyears ahead in terms of reliability and overall developer and end-user experience.

The product maybe, but my interactions with the company have been dissapointing.
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