November 2019 Summaries

Jennifer Wu is a full-stack developer at Plaid's Consumer Experience team, where she works on products that interface with end-users. She enjoys building products that have lasting impact on people's lives and loves puzzles, which is why she finds her job so fulfilling. Plaid is a thoughtful company that recognizes talent exists everywhere and allows remote work, giving engineers the opportunity to maintain their personal lives and bring diversity to the team. Wu values ownership and autonomy in her work, which is why she was drawn to Plaid's bottom-up planning process. When not working, Wu enjoys drawing, bullet journaling, and jigsaw puzzles, and if she weren't an engineer, she would be a high school math teacher.

Plaid is expanding its fintech ecosystem to include France, Spain, and Ireland in beta, aiming to increase access for consumers with unique financial management tools. The company has strengthened institution coverage in Canada and made its first overseas expansion into the UK, while adding support for more UK banks and neobanks. With this new launch, Plaid aims to foster local fintech communities, strengthen PSD2 adoption, and provide a bridge for developers to expand their services to new markets. The platform now offers integrations with major financial institutions in France, Spain, and Ireland, including Société Générale, Santander, and AIB, allowing developers to access a more holistic picture of consumer finances through the Transactions, Identity, Auth, Balance, and Assets modules. Additionally, Plaid's front-end module, Link, is now available in English, Spanish, or French, catering to different user needs.

Building Stack is a property management platform that assists landlords and tenants by automating daily workflows and offering innovative functionalities. The Montreal-based company currently manages 100,000 units across Canada and the United States, with a significant growth rate of 190% in 2019 alone. To enhance its payment experience for tenants, Building Stack switched from its previous provider to Plaid, which now connects to 400% more customer bank accounts. This change has helped prevent over $36,000 in credit card fees and NSF fees every month, totaling $432,000 annually.

Plaid introduces two new tools for easier troubleshooting of external systems - event logs in the dashboard and product-level details in institution status. Event logs allow users to view their most recent API requests and webhook events, while product-level details provide information on the state of integrations with financial institutions. These updates aim to improve user experience by providing more visibility into integration issues.

In October 2019, the following updates were made: institution status now includes success rates of Balance, Auth, and Identity updates; routing numbers are returned by default for an Institution Object in APIs; LinkKit v1.1.24 was released with new callback events and balance localization support; improvements were implemented for credit card details APR capture for PNC and Tangerine; identity support was added for all student loan servicers available in the Liabilities product; accuracy of categorizing overdraft transactions and transfers was improved; Investments coverage expanded, improving support for 529 plans and adding over 300 institutions such as Acorns and Interactive Brokers; UK support was added for more institutions and account types including Starling Bank, Barclaycard, and business accounts.

Jack LaMar, a mid-market account executive at Plaid, shares his experiences working with prospective clients throughout the sales funnel. He enjoys guiding technical prospects and brainstorming solutions for businesses that don’t know much about Plaid but want to explore potential overlap. Jack appreciates working on new financial problems and modernizing established businesses. He's been in four different sales roles since joining Plaid, taking a step back in title initially to prove himself and advance opportunities. Jack praises Plaid as a great company with an open-door policy, lighthearted environment, and competitive corporate soccer team. He attributes the company's determination to its individuals and mission-driven culture. Jack finds his energy and self-competitiveness drive him forward, and he balances work and personal life by planning ahead and focusing on goals. His background in environmental studies and punk rock influences his desire for a positive impact and his interest in observing others. Jack transitioned into tech and sales through a recruiting software startup and enjoys the team-oriented atmosphere at Plaid, which challenges him intellectually and keeps him stimulated every day. In his free time, he appreciates doing nothing but doing it somewhere, recognizing the importance of self-awareness and detachment from self-absorption.