Who Plaid is
Plaid is a San Francisco company that connects apps to their users' bank accounts. Through Plaid Link, a customer signs in to their bank and shares what an app needs: account and routing numbers, balances, transactions and the account owner's identity.
It covers banks in the United States and Canada, and in the UK and Europe, where Plaid Financial Limited is authorised by the FCA and Plaid B.V. by De Nederlandsche Bank to provide open banking services. Fintechs and other digital financial services build on it, which is why it is one of the open banking providers our accounts module connects to.
What it does in your platform
Accounts & IBANs
Links the accounts your customers hold at other banks. With their consent, Plaid returns the account details and balance, so customers can fund their account in your app or cash out to their own bank, and Identity can confirm the account is theirs.
How the connection works
One connector talks to Plaid's API, and Plaid Link opens in your apps. The platform holds Plaid's keys and the long-lived access token; the app only handles short-lived tokens.
A customer adds a bank
In your app, to fund their account from their own bank. The module asks Plaid for a link token for this customer.
Plaid Link opens
On the web, on iOS and Android, and in our Flutter apps through Plaid's official Flutter SDK. The customer picks their bank and signs in, on the bank's own site or app where the bank uses OAuth.
A token is exchanged
Link hands the app a temporary public token. The platform exchanges it with Plaid for an access token, which never leaves the platform.
The details come back
With the access token, the module reads the account and routing number and the balance, and checks the owner's name where Identity is used.
And stay current
Plaid's webhooks, signed as a JWT in the Plaid-Verification header, report changes such as consent that needs renewing. Each linked account and its status shows in the backoffice.
Next to other providers
Plaid can sit next to the European providers in the same group, Tink, TrueLayer and Yapily, each connecting the banks your customers use.
The screens around Plaid Link, the linked accounts and their history belong to the module. Adding another provider, or moving away from Plaid later, changes a connector, not your app.
When Plaid fits best
A strong fit when
- Your customers bank in the United States or Canada.
- You fund accounts or pay out over ACH and need verified account and routing numbers.
- Your apps are built in Flutter, React Native or natively, and you want an official SDK for each.
Also worth a look
- Tink, TrueLayer or Yapily, its peers in our open banking group, as a second provider for European banks.
- A provider you already have a contract with: it becomes a connector too.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Plaid account and contract in place, for the countries and products you need.
The products
We choose the Plaid products with you, such as Auth, Balance and Identity, and set up the Link flow your customers see.
The keys
The client ID, the secret and every access token stay in your platform's secrets and nowhere else; apps only see the short-lived tokens Link needs.
A full test run
The whole flow runs in Plaid's Sandbox with its test banks and test credentials, from Link to webhook, before your first real customer.
