Plaid

Fintech

Empowering fintech innovation through seamless financial data connectivity APIs.

Official Plaid Careers Website

Quick Facts

Headquarters: San Francisco, California, USA
Founded: 2013
Employees: 1,200+
Valuation: $13.4 Billion

About Plaid

Plaid is a leading data network powering the fintech ecosystem. By connecting bank accounts to consumer applications, Plaid enables millions of users to link their financial accounts to apps like Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Betterment securely and instantaneously.

The platform provides APIs for account authentication, balance checks, identity verification, automated payments, and enriched transaction data across thousands of financial institutions.

What Plaid Does

Account Connectivity & Auth

Building instant account verification and authentication protocols connecting over 12,000 financial institutions worldwide.

Transactions & Data Enrichment

Normalizing, categorizing, and enriching real-time bank transaction data to deliver actionable insights for personal finance apps.

Payment Infrastructure

Enabling fast, lower-cost pay-by-bank experiences, ACH transfers, and instant payout capabilities for merchants and platforms.

Identity & Risk Management

Providing automated KYC identity verification, fraud detection, and credit risk assessment APIs for seamless onboarding.

Career Areas

Types of professional roles found inside Plaid.

Software Engineering & API Platforms
Product & Design
Data & ML Engineering
Solutions Engineering

Plaid's History

2013
Founding in San Francisco
Zach Perret and William Hockey founded Plaid to simplify banking integrations for early fintech developers.
2018
Unicorn Status
Raised $250M Series C led by Mary Meeker's Bond Capital, valuing the open-banking API pioneer at over $2.6B.
2020
Proposed Merger & Independent Pivot
Agreed to a $5.3B merger with Visa, which was mutually called off in 2021 following regulatory scrutiny, leading to independent hypergrowth.
2024
Pay-by-Bank & Credit Scale
Expanded into instant bank payments, credit underwriting intelligence, and multi-country open-banking connectivity.