Plaid to DOJ: No acquisition? No problem.
There has been no stopping Plaid since the U.S. Department of Justice put the kibosh on its planned acquisition by Visa at the beginning of the year.
Last week, the financial data connectivity platform announced that it was collaborating with fellow Finovate alum DriveWealth. Before that, the company introduced the first graduates of its diversity-oriented fintech accelerator, FinRise; announced a partnership with Dun & Bradstreet; and unveiled its new income verification tool, Plaid Income.
Today brings news that Plaid has secured a massive $425 million investment in a round led by Altimeter Capital. The Series D round also features participation from Silver Lake, Ribbit Capital, and other current investors, and gives the firm a total capital amount of more than $734 million. Now sporting a valuation of $13.4 billion, Plaid said it will use the additional capital to “grow its platform, invest in infrastructure, payments capabilities and global expansion,” according to the company’s U.K. head, Keith Grose.
In a blog post titled “Digital finance is everywhere, but it’s just getting started,” Plaid CEO and co-founder Zach Perret described how, in some ways, the dream that led to the founding of Plaid “nearly a decade ago” is beginning to come true. “We dreamt of a financial system that was built to empower consumers and unlock financial freedom for everyone,” Perret said. “We are humbled to watch as fintech continues to expand and improve the financial lives of billions of people worldwide.”
More specifically, Perret’s post makes it clear that “scale” is the next big objective for the San Francisco, California-based fintech. In order to meet increasing global demand, as well as deliver on the growing expectations of ever-more-digitally-savvy consumers, Plaid will continue to invest in API technology as well as “tools and services to support enhanced privacy, personalization, decisioning, and automation.”
Founded in 2012, Plaid made its Finovate debut two years later at our developers conference, FinDEVr. The company has grown from an API-building technology infrastructure startup to now also offer key insights into the data access it provides via a suite of analytics solutions. Plaid’s technology enables users to access detailed transaction histories, setup direct debits and payouts, verify borrower assets, user identities, and real-time account balances; and make instant, in-app bank payments.
Since inception, Plaid has analyzed more than 10 billion transactions. Use cases for the company’s technology range from personal finance, lending, and wealth management, to consumer payments, banking, and business finance.