January 2024 Summaries

The fintech industry in Europe is expected to continue growing despite challenging market conditions, with the UK and EU leading the development of regulatory frameworks supporting open finance initiatives. In 2024, four key areas are anticipated to benefit from evolving financial regulations: increased open banking conversion rates, adoption of Variable Recurring Payments (VRP), greater data accessibility for better lending decisions, and declining fraud rates due to advanced authentication methods. PSD3 is expected to accelerate opportunities across the digital finance landscape in Europe and the UK by promoting innovation and stronger competition, leading to better offerings for consumers, higher performance for businesses, and more convenient solutions.

In 2023, Plaid helped shape the financial lives of hundreds of millions of people by enabling one-third of US consumers with a bank account to use its services for signing up for fintech apps. The company facilitated over 500,000 new connections daily on its network and supported growth in 18 European countries. Plaid's data partners increased from 12,000+ financial institutions (FIs) and 8,000+ apps to 6,000+ FIs and apps building API connectivity with Plaid. The company also improved conversion rates for its customers by 5% compared to 2022 and supported faster payments through RTP and FedNow support. Additionally, Plaid helped protect businesses and customers from fraudsters and ATOs by verifying over 28 million accounts and 15 million identities in 2023.

Plaid has submitted a comment letter on the proposed Dodd-Frank 1033 rule, which aims to establish a comprehensive financial data right for consumers, promoting competition and innovation while ensuring consumer protection and safety in the financial ecosystem. The company believes that this rule will encourage greater choice, more competition, and redundancy across services like payments, ultimately benefiting consumers by driving down costs and motivating companies to build better products. With over 75% of its traffic already on or committed to APIs, Plaid supports the transition to API-based integrations and encourages regulators to ensure a reasonable timeline for the implementation of this technology.