June 2022 Summaries

Petal, a fintech credit startup, aimed to address the limitations of traditional credit scores by using cash flow data to underwrite credit cards. The company partnered with WebBank to issue its cards and developed Plaid to securely share banking data among applicants. This innovation seeks to unlock access to credit for millions of Americans without traditional credit scores.

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has altered the 90-day reauthentication rules, aiming to improve end users' experience. With this change, instead of re-authenticating with their bank, end users will only need to re-consent with the Third Party Provider (TPP), such as Plaid. This rule change is effective from September 30th, 2022, and applies to TPPs and banks in the UK regulated by the FCA. The upcoming change in Europe extends the current 90-day consent period to 180 days but does not alter the end user experience as they continue re-authenticating directly with their bank.

Plaid has introduced new products and features to help with AML and KYC compliance obligations, including Identity Verification and Monitor, which provide a complete verification solution, and Guarantee Beta, which guarantees settlement for ACH transactions. The company also launched an improvement to Update Mode, Transactions, and Auth, enabling faster conversion rates and improved customer experiences. Additionally, Plaid has introduced category rules for Transactions, allowing users to provide personalized financial experiences, and Auth Type Select, giving customers the flexibility to choose their preferred authentication method. Users are also encouraged to upgrade to the latest Link SDKs to provide an optimal experience for their customers.

Plaid has successfully migrated its production services from Elastic Container Service (ECS) to Kubernetes. The company initially used ECS but faced operational issues such as complexity in creating new services and lack of visibility into service performance. After a two-year migration process, Plaid implemented a self-serve deployment model called Self-Serve or Scaffold, which automates much of the deployment process and allows teams to operate their own services. However, the company encountered scaling challenges with many services requiring more pods than could fit in a single cluster. To address these issues, Plaid is now redesigning its Kubernetes clusters for multicluster deployments, allowing traffic to shift between clusters if one fails or needs maintenance.

Plaid’s engineering team of 360+ engineers supports a developer customer base of over 6,000+ financial apps and services, requiring the development of internal products that optimize common workflows to increase internal velocity. To address scaling challenges, Plaid's Developer Efficiency Team created "Devenv", an internal CLI tool backed by a remote environment, which has significantly improved developer efficiency over the last couple years. The team defined Devenv as a command-line interface (CLI) tool used to power various development workflows and test suites in their continuous integration (CI) environment, allowing developers to build, debug, and run services from the command line. By introducing a CLI aimed at giving developers an interface that abstracted away complexity, the team improved developer efficiency by facilitating cross-repo development, providing simplified service lifecycle controls, and enabling groups of services to be tested in context. The Devenv interface was extended over time to include tools for iterating on documentation and feature flags, before being shifted to a remote environment in the cloud to improve performance and reliability. This transition enabled faster build times, reduced Docker image pull times, and improved debuggability, with 87% of users exclusively using the Remote Devenv and 97% of all commands run on it. The team continues to optimize Devenv for the cloud, using techniques such as volume mounts, rsync, and Watchman to improve iteration workflows and reduce latency. Today, Devenv powers over 150 services and is run >2,000 times a day by developers, becoming an everyday tool and necessity in Plaid's engineering environment.

Plaid has made significant announcements regarding its commitment to expanding digital finance's positive impact on Canadian consumers and businesses, including opening its first office in Toronto, Canada, which will support critical functions such as financial institution partnerships, policy, sales, software engineering, and product management. The company is also pleased to announce a data access agreement with RBC, the largest bank in Canada, bringing secure API-based financial access to over 14 million digital clients, who can now securely connect to Plaid's data network of 6,000+ apps and services. This partnership adds momentum to Plaid's efforts to empower consumers with secure access and control over their financial information, driving collaboration with institutions, customers, and the broader industry to ensure a financial access approach that best serves Canadian consumers.

The SPIN pod was launched by Plaid's engineering team to improve collaboration across teams and empower developer customers to build and scale small product improvements. The team addressed customer pain points, such as transparency into transaction data freshness, through a cross-functional approach that included engineers from various product groups. By working with customers, the team developed solutions with high technical craftsmanship and a focus on code design, ultimately improving the customer experience and internal engineering team dynamics. The SPIN pod structure allowed for synchronized schedules and focused efforts on the customer experience, creating a unique opportunity for the team to dive deep into customer needs and build relationships with engineers across product groups.

Plaid has established an Industry Advisory Board to foster collaboration and alignment among financial institutions, fintechs, and consumers in creating a truly open financial system. As an API-first company, Plaid aims to build secure connections with over 12,000 financial institutions to support consumer financial management. The board brings together industry experts with diverse perspectives and experiences, including CEO roles at prominent financial services companies, legal expertise, and strategic leadership. These advisors will help Plaid deepen its engagement with the industry, anticipate emerging issues, and add more value to stakeholders. By working together, Plaid and the Industry Advisory Board aim to strengthen industry relationships in new ways that benefit consumers.

Plaid is partnering with Mollie, one of Europe's fastest-growing payment service providers, to simplify ecommerce for merchants across the UK and Europe. The partnership aims to provide SME merchants with better tools to grow their business in a thriving ecommerce landscape. By integrating Plaid's open banking data network into Mollie's platform, merchants can validate bank account ownership in real-time, streamlining the onboarding process and enabling easier digital storefronts. This collaboration seeks to address the challenges faced by SMEs in offering preferred payment methods for local customers and providing seamless digital experiences. The partnership will continue to develop new joint solutions that help SMEs reduce costs, increase loyalty, and compete with online stores of any size.