A big acquisition happened in fintech this week. Visa bought Plaid, a startup that develops financial APIs, for $5.3 billion, in a deal that effectively doubled Plaid’s last private valuation.
A refresher on Plaid: It’s kind of like Stripe, but instead of helping individuals send and receive payments online, it helps applications (like Venmo,
Acorns,
Robinhood,
Coinbase and
Gemini) connect with users’ bank accounts. 25% of people who have bank accounts in the U.S. have reportedly connected to the service (through an app like Venmo).
According to
a blog post from Plaid CEO Zach Perret, the company will continue to operate as an independent business unit under Visa.
“We were very impressed by the Visa team from the minute they approached us. They share our vision for the future of financial services and have deep respect for the developer community we support.” - Zach
According to Visa’s
deck on the acquisition, they are hot on the fintech sector. Some notable launches in fintech we’ve seen over the past year (in case you’re looking, Visa):
💸
Atom Finance is like Bloomberg Terminal, but for free
💸
Stripe Capital offers instant loans to customers
💸
Coin Assistant is the “Venmo of crypto”
💸
Lannister is an encrypted personal wealth manager
For a lot more fintech products, go here.
Want to try red light therapy to improve your health? It's a thing. 🚨
Demonstrate Strong AI Governance: Get the ISO 42001 Compliance Checklist
The ISO 42001 framework enables organizations to demonstrate trustworthy AI practices in accordance with global standards. With Vanta, completing the requirements to achieve ISO 42001 compliance can be done in a fraction of the time. 95% of required document templates are pre-built for you, accelerating your path to compliance and helping you build trust. With Vanta’s ISO 42001 framework you can:
Vanta's ISO 42001 compliance checklist helps to lay the foundation for what your organization should expect when working towards certification.
