In fact, most people may not have heard of the fintech company Plaid. In reality, it powers many financial apps and it is the portal linking those apps to our bank accounts — even if the name Plaid isn’t pasted across our screens.
The lawsuits outline how an app’s authentication process prompts users to link their bank account and takes them through Plaid but shows a screen that looks like it belongs to the bank itself.
Consumers see the bank logo and branding, not Plaid’s, which may lead them to believe their data is securely being handled by the financial institution they trust rather than a third party. That trust has allowed Plaid access to millions of consumers’ data, which it flipped for profit.
But the value of the company was also increased by the “big data” information it owned as well as its ability to continue to mine user data. Visa acquired the company early this year for a whopping $5.3 billion, and Visa, at least in part, was buying a mountain of private banking data.
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