Plaid Launches Capital One Open Finance Partnership

Plaid announced a new open finance partnership with Capital One on Wednesday (June 9), just as the FinTech is completing its migration to the Capital One API.

The company had set a goal last year to move 75 percent of its traffic to APIs by the close of 2021, calling it “one of our top priorities as the industry moves full-steam ahead toward a fully digital financial system.”

Plaid said in a news release that it had completed or had begun data access agreements with most major financial institutions (FIs) in the country, including J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. The company launched an open banking partnership with U.S Bank in May.

“What we did together with Plaid is a huge step forward in open finance, especially for our shared customers,” said Gareth Gaston, executive vice president and chief digital officer for platforms and capabilities at U.S. Bank. “The overall digital financial ecosystem is stronger when credentials are eliminated and replaced with secure APIs.”

The company said its integrations with FIs are designed to make sure more customers can share financial information securely with the thousands of apps powered by Plaid, which include Robinhood and Venmo. “Moving to an API-based ecosystem helps make data sharing more reliable, and also helps eliminate the industry’s reliance on credentials, a major priority for us and the broader ecosystem,” Plaid said.

These partnerships are happening at a time when more than half of Americans are using digital money management tools, while another 59 percent are using more money management apps than they did before COVID-19.

Plaid said it is also working on an initiative called Plaid Portal, a service (now in beta) that allows customers to view and manage their account connections to make sure they control where data is shared.

For a larger look at open banking, check out Karen Webster’s conversation from last month with TrueLayer Co-founder and CEO Francesco Simoneschi and Wells Fargo Executive Vice President of Open Banking Imran Haider.