US Bank, Plaid Partner On Open Banking Portal

U.S. Bank, the fifth largest bank in the U.S., has joined with FinTech company Plaid in an open finance partnership. The collaboration will allow their millions of customers to manage their accounts and connect to FinTech apps and services, the two companies said in a Thursday (May 13) press release.

The companies said they had integrated their respective technologies “in record time.” The news release added that the two companies joined forces to upgrade U.S. Bank customers to an application programming interface (API)-based open banking setup with Plaid.

The integration “includes new bi-directional functionality between U.S. Bank My Controls and the Plaid Portal (currently in beta),” per the announcement. “Now shared customers adjust their permissions quickly and easily through either company’s experience and the settings will remain synced across more than 4,500 applications on Plaid’s network.”

Open banking allows third-party developers to build applications and services around the financial institution. It can offer greater financial transparency options for account holders.

“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.”

For its part, “Plaid is committed to an API-based ecosystem and the customer-focused vision we share with U.S. Bank helped us collectively reach this milestone quickly — it is a true partnership,” said Ginger Baker, head of financial access at Plaid.

Plaid announced last month that it had raised $425 million. The company said that put its valuation at $13.4 billion. This is its first funding since its $5.3 billion sale to Visa was blocked.

“Our market is seeing a sea change, with consumers that we never thought would be embracing digital finance engaging with it in a big way,” Plaid Co-Founder and CEO Zach Perret said at the time.