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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Plaid, a provider of APIs for financial infrastructure, announced its expansion into the U.K. this week. The move makes a lot of sense– an open banking fintech is launching in the motherland of open banking.
“We’re building a financial network that will deliver on the promise of open banking with the best in both local expertise and global opportunity,” Keith Grose, International Lead at Plaid said in a blog post.
The U.K. is Plaid’s second international market after launching in Canada last year. The expansion overseas initiates the San Francisco-based company’s more comprehensive launch into Europe as a whole.
Plaid elected to launch in the U.K. because, as some have argued, the region is the fintech capital of the globe. More than 1,600 fintech companies have come out of the U.K. and that number is projected to double in the next ten years.
Today’s news is as much about Plaid launching in the U.K. as it is about opening up the possibility for its client applications to do business in the region, as well. Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase and Acorns all use Plaid to connect to their customers’ U.S. bank accounts, and can now more easily expand into Europe using existing integrations.
Plaid, which was granted its AISP license from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority last October, currently offers five of its products in the U.K.:
Auth, an account authentication tool
Balance, which pulls account balance information in real-time
Identity, which leverages bank data to verify consumer identity
Transactions, which pulls bank statement data across banks
Assets, a verification of assets tool
Missing from this list is Plaid’s Income product, a tool that validates a consumer’s income and verifies direct deposit data.
At FinDEVr San Fransisco 2014, the company’s founder, Zach Perret gave a presentation about leveraging the Plaid API for financial infrastructure. Plaid has raised $310 million since it was founded in 2013. After the company’s most recent investment last year, TechCrunch estimated Plaid to be valued at $2.65 billion.
Plaid began 2019 by acquiring its competitor Quovo in a $200 million deal. At FinovateSpring earlier this month bill payment platform doxoannounced it is leveraging Plaid to bring customers overdraft protection when paying their bills online. And last week, Plaid unveiled Plaid Direct, a lightweight integration that makes banks and fintechs a data source in the Plaid network, allowing end customers to enjoy open banking connectivity across financial service providers.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Online and mobile billpay innovator doxo has announced a new integration with financial services data and insights network – and fellow Finovate alum – Plaid – that will help consumers avoid overdraft charges when paying bills via doxo’s service.
“doxo’s mission is to massively simplify bill payment and reduce anxiety of failed payments and overdraft fees,” doxo CEO and co-founder and Steve Shivers said. “Through this new integration with Plaid, we’re now providing real-time bank balance, at the time of every payment, to help our users avoid those fees. Now users can better time their payments to align with their bank balance, or switch to alternative payment accounts like credit cards when needed.”
In addition to providing transparency, better organization, and less stress for consumers, doxo believes billers will benefit from the improved confidence they will have for each incoming payment. Billers who join doxo’s payment network will be able to add the overdraft protection feature as a user benefit easily, without complexity or expense.
doxo will make the new solution available initially as a beta offering for a limited group. The company anticipates expanding access to all of its customers beginning in June.
“Account overdraft is a huge problem in the U.S. that could be solved in part with more tools that provide real-time insight into consumers’ own bank accounts,” Plaid Head of Sales Paul Williamson said. “Solutions that give people transparency into their financial life are a real win for consumers and can make a serious impact on their ability to understand and manage money.”
doxo made its first Finovate appearance in 2011, demonstrating the web-based Control Panel interface of its technology, and returned to the Finovate stage this week as part of FinovateSpring. Plaid is an alum of our developers conference, presentingPlaid: API for Financial Infrastructure at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014.
San Francisco, California-based Plaid was founded in 2013. The company began 2019 with a major acquisition, purchasing rival and fellow Finovate/FinDEVr alum Quovo for $200 million. Named to the Forbes Fintech 50 in February, Plaid has raised more than $309 million in funding from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, doxo launched itsdoxoINSIGHTS report last month. DoxoINSIGHTS is an anonymized, crowdsourced report on household expense data from the largest 25 metropolitan areas of the U.S.
In March, doxo added Apple Pay as a billpay option for its customers – the same month the company announced a partnership with R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company to provide the firm’s clients with access to doxo’s electronic billpay solutions. Winner of a Gold Stevie award from the American Business Awards last year, doxo serves more than 2.5 million users who make payments to more than 45,000 local and national businesses.
doxo has raised $18.8 million in funding, and includes Sigma Partners, Bezos Expeditions, and Mohr Davidow Ventures among its investors.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
A baker’s dozen of Finovate alums has been honored this week with spots on the 2019 Forbes Fintech 50, an annual aggregation of what the editors called “the most innovative companies in fintech.”
“Recognition as a leading innovator in fintech is tremendous validation for the hard work we’ve done at Marqeta to open the industry up to the possibilities and opportunities of modern card issuing,” company CEO and founder Jason Gardner said. Marqeta is among the 20 companies to make its first appearance on the Forbes Fintech 50 roster.
Also earning their first appearances on Forbes Fintech 50 roster are New York based mobile investment platform Stash and San Francisco supply chain payments innovator Tradeshift.
“Very excited to be included in the 2019 Forbes Fintech 50!,” Stash tweeted once the news was released at the start of the week, “Monday = made.”
“We made the list!” Tradeshift tweeted this morning.
Summarizing this year’s selection of top fintechs, the editors noted that while 19 out of the 50 fintechs featured are unicorns with valuations of more than $1 billion, a nearly equal amount – 20 startups – are making their first showing on Forbes top fintech list. The two areas where newcomers were more prevalent, according to the editors, were payments technology and startups serving the un- and underbanked.
San Francisco-based fintech app provider Plaid has made its first major acquisition with the purchase of competitor Quovo for $200 million, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Plaid hasn’t gone public on the price, but a source familiar with the deal spoke with CNBC to spill the financial beans. Plaid reckons the acquisition will make it easier for developers to build products that incorporate investment and brokerage data.
New York-based Quovo offers investment, insurance, and loan account coverage. Its platform is used by such firms as Betterment, Wealthfront and SoFi, as well as wealthtech companies like Stifel, Vanguard, Empower Retirement, and John Hancock.
Some of Plaid’s users include cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, robo-advisors Betterment and Wealthfront (same as Quovo), trading app Robinhood and PayPal’s digital wallet Venmo.
Plaid plans to build a single platform to let users “build any financial application – from payments to lending to wealth management.”
This deal follows on from last month when Plaid enjoyed a $250 million Series C funding round. With that investment, the start-up earned an impressive valuation of $2.65 billion.
Back in October 201, Plaid linked up with JP Morgan Chase to help the bank make a move toward open banking by enabling account holders to share their financial data with third-party fintech applications.
Prior to that, in May 2018, the company expanded to Canada as its first international market.
The firm was founded in 2013 and has got the backing of some big names. These include Goldman Sachs, Amex, Citi, and Google Ventures. About two years ago Plaid got a handy $44 million in funding led by Goldman Sachs.
Plaid CEO and co-founder Zach Perret presentedAPI for Financial Infrastructure at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. Quovo is a two-time veteran of our developers conferences: sharing the stage with SoFi at FinDEVr New York 2017, and teaming up with Betterment at FinDEVr New York 2016.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.