zachperret

Great question. I do not know off the top of my head, but can look into it.

We all wish more banks had API's! Our team is actively working with many more banks to launch them soon, but alas -- legacy infrastructure is slow to move!

Indeed! Plaid is integrated with ~every bank that has an API, and in many cases we've actually helped the banks build API's themselves.

Plaid founder here. Stripe does not integrate with any bank API's directly (AFAICT). They wrap two aggregators, MX and Finicity to build this product. (Also, not sure what MX products they are using, but MX itself is an aggregator of aggregators, including others such as Yodlee.)

On pricing, Stripe's listed rates are 30-200% higher than Plaid rates (perhaps due to high vendor costs). That said, if anyone does have feedback on where Plaid pricing is prohibiting new use cases, we'd love to hear! I'm zach at plaid if folks would like to discuss.

Haha, we've long joked that Plaid should launch a line of flannel shirts...

Yes, this really bugs me too. Unfortunately, the issue is on SVB's side. We're continuing to work on it, but I'd also recommend raising this with SVB directly if you are a customer.

Plaid founder here. Yes - our development environment is unpaid and many people use it for personal budgeting. You can sign up here: https://dashboard.plaid.com/signup

Just once. We had to fill out the paperwork for their procurement and compliance teams, but I don't think it was a public RFP.

In the early days, we had a policy that we would not respond to RFP's. The time required vs. value does not make sense for startups (unless you've already been told you'll win and the RFP is just a formality).

Our Income product is distinct from Auth, and not used by Coinbase. The only way for a consumer's Income data to be collected, analyzed, and sent is when the consumer directly permissions an application to receive it.

Let's say you're applying for a loan via a lender that's a Plaid customer and you want to verify your income. In that case, you'd have to link your bank account with that lender (via Plaid), giving that lender permission to collect data about your Income. There's no way for that lender to get your income (or any other) data from Plaid without you explicitly connecting your account.

Plaid co-founder here. We don't resell data. In the case of Coinbase, they're setting up ACH transfers (see Auth on our products page), to avoid the 3-5 day delay in connecting a bank account for ACH.

Hey Aaron -- super sorry to hear about the situation. Soundcloud is a fantastic product and company. If you or your colleagues are interested, Plaid is hiring engineers in SF. You can find a full description here: https://plaid.com/careers.

Or, better, just drop me a line directly: zach [at] plaid [dot] com

This isn't strictly an immigration-focused question, but I'd love to hear about any best practices for equity grants for full-time international employees and employees that might start internationally while waiting for visa approval.

Nope, no micro-deposits necessary at all

Unfortuantely, creating a memo post (hold on funds) is impossible given today's ACH infrastructure. That said, you can use Plaid to monitor funds availability throughout the lifetime of the transaction, and to predict the likelihood of clearing.

ABA/DDA are inherently less secure than online access credentials. An account can be directly debited if ABA/DDA are compromised, and they cannot be rotated without closing the account. Plaid tokenizes all this to avoid any potential issues -- and further, if credentials are somehow compromised they can be rotated very easily.

Privacy uses Plaid on the back-end for this and does not store user credentials.

No need to sign up. You can actually find the full list in our docs: https://plaid.com/docs/#long-tail-institutions

No. Plaid tokens live for an extended period of time and can be used for multiple balance verifications.

Plaid will be rolling out support for many more banks in the coming weeks.

Couldn't agree more.

Yes, Plaid can help with most of this. You can see the full docs at https://plaid.com/docs for more details.

Plaid co-founder here. When users connect their accounts via the Plaid instant verification process, we actually allow developers to get a greater understanding of the user. Via Plaid, you can do things like validate the available balance and check the account owner's identity -- which can significantly reduce the likelihood of ACH fraud.

Plaid - https://plaid.com/careers San Francisco, CA - Full Time - Software Engineers

Plaid is a platform for financial technology applications. We allow developers to build apps like Venmo, Wealthfront, and ZenPayroll that interface with core banking infrastructure. Since launching two years ago, we’ve built integrations with most of the major banks and now power thousands of fintech applications. In the process, we're generating one of the largest transactional data sets in the world, and using machine learning to draw insights about how consumers spend their time, money, and attention.

Our small team is highly collaborative and passionate about building the tools to enable the future of finance. We are looking for generalists, who are comfortable solving interesting problems and building scalable products.

Please email jobs+engineering[at]plaid.com

Plaid - https://plaid.com/careers San Francisco, CA - Full Time - Software Engineers

Plaid is a platform for financial technology applications. We allow developers to build apps like Venmo, Wealthfront, and ZenPayroll that interface with core banking infrastructure. Since launching two years ago, we’ve built integrations with most of the major banks and now power thousands of fintech applications. In the process, we're generating one of the largest transactional data sets in the world, and using machine learning to draw insights about how consumers spend their time, money, and attention.

Our small team is highly collaborative and passionate about building the tools to enable the future of finance. We are looking for generalists, who are comfortable solving interesting problems and building scalable products.

Please email jobs+engineering[at]plaid.com

Working on it :)

Zach here from Plaid (a bit late in responding). I understand the hesitations around privacy here; however, there's a difference between sharing credentials and account/routing number. SSSaving is using a read-only data feed that is authenticated by username and password. The app has no access to your account/routing data and cannot debit your account.

Your account and routing number are all that's needed to move money in or out of your account. SSSavings does not get these, nor should any application you don't want to debit you. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot be changed without shutting down the account (whereas credentials can be changed quickly).

Feel free to reach out -- I'm zach@plaid.com

Completely agree. We're working on some of this, but ultimately moving to true OAuth is going to require the banks to get more deeply involved.

Here at Plaid (https://plaid.com/docs), we're trying to build this for all the major banks.