Mission Lane and Plaid Deliver Financial Tools to Underbanked Customers

Mission Lane and Plaid have expanded their partnership to deliver modern financial tools to underbanked customers.

This open finance partnership will give Mission Lane’s 2 million customers — many of whom are working to build or rebuild their credit and improve their financial outcomes — access to digital payments, financial planning and investment tools, and other resources powered by the Plaid network, the companies said in a Wednesday (Feb. 22) press release.

“In today’s world, consumers expect their finances to be seamless and at their fingertips,” Mission Lane CEO Shane Holdaway said in the release. “This is especially true for the many customers we work with who are trying to build or rebuild their financial lives and want to have a full picture of where they stand.”

As PYMNTS reported in December, being underbanked or unbanked locks households out of personal loans, direct deposits, many types of credit payments and a host of other functions that much of the world takes for granted.

In the United States, 16% of the population is underbanked and 8% have no bank account at all.

Sixty percent of unbanked individuals said lack of money was a reason for not opening a financial account, 40% said that financial services are too expensive, and 27% cited a lack of proper documentation to obtain a financial account, as reported in “Telecoms’ Emerging Role in the Payments and Banking Field,” a PYMNTS and i2c collaboration.

The partnership of Mission Lane and Plaid leverages Plaid’s open finance application programming interface (API) data connectivity solution to enable the secure connection of Mission Lane-branded accounts to the 7,000 apps and services available from the Plaid network, according to the press release.

Among the solutions Mission Lane is now using are Plaid Assets, which facilitates credit decisions by providing a more holistic picture of customers’ financial lives, and Plaid Signal, which helps customers avoid unwanted fees from financial institutions by reducing automated clearing house (ACH) return rates, the release said.

“Plaid is excited to expand our partnership with Mission Lane to ensure that even more people will benefit from financial inclusion,” Plaid Chief Operating Officer Eric Sager said in the release.