Fiserv Forges Data-Sharing Partnership With Plaid

Payments and financial services technology provider Fiserv and data network Plaid launched a data-sharing partnership.

The collaboration lets customers of Fiserv-hosted banks and credit unions connect to the more than 8,000 applications and services on the Plaid network via “secure and reliable data sharing through application programming interfaces (APIs),” the companies said in a Thursday (Oct. 12) news release provided to PYMNTS.

The partnership addresses “growing consumer demand to access their financial information when, where and how they want,” per the release.

“Our customers want to ensure reliable connections to the applications they choose to do business with, and we see the partnership between Fiserv and Plaid as an important step to delivering secure open banking,” said Jason Lazzerini, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Fiserv-hosted Central Pacific Bank.

The connection uses Fiserv’s AllData Connect tool to allow consumers to share financial information with the third-party financial apps and services of their choice, per the release.

“The scale of this agreement is unprecedented in the industry and will significantly expand the direct sharing of data between financial institutions and the third parties with which their customers interact,” the release said.

The tie-up follows a similar collaboration in August between Fiserv and Akoya, an API-only network for consumer-permissioned financial information sharing, to allow for streamlined and secure data flow between financial institutions, third parties and customers.

Jamie DelMedico, vice president and head of product for Fiserv’s BillPay, Aggregation and Verification Services, told PYMNTS at the time that the partnership broadens, securitizes and standardizes data access as consumers choose to share their information with apps.

“It’s a two-way data-sharing relationship between Akoya and Fiserv,” said DelMedico.

Meanwhile, Plaid teamed with American Express in June to make it easier for customers to use FinTech apps.

The two firms formed a customer-permissioned data-sharing agreement that lets American Express clients connect to any of the apps and services powered by Plaid without having to share their American Express password with a third party.

“This agreement reflects American Express’ commitment to providing our customers with the security, control and transparency they want when sharing their account data with financial apps of their choosing,” Danielle Cloud, senior vice president of enterprise data governance and platforms at American Express, said at the time.