Who are Plaid's competitors?
Plaid is private and files no 10-K, so there is no Competition section to quote; the record is what its executives have said and what rivals' filings and the trade press name. In bank-data aggregation, Plaid's then-CTO said in May 2022 that it had been competing "with Yodlee, MX and Finicity since day one", and Envestnet's 2023 10-K listed Plaid with Intuit, Finicity (a Mastercard subsidiary) and Fiserv as competitors of its data business. Mastercard says its open finance network connects over 95% of U.S. deposit accounts (January 2026); Envestnet sold Yodlee to STG in September 2025. Stripe launched Financial Connections in May 2022 in direct competition with Plaid, a former partner. In open banking and pay by bank, Visa runs Tink in Europe and Latin America, and the Justice Department argued that Visa's abandoned $5.3 billion purchase of Plaid would extinguish a nascent competitor; Trustly, which reported more than 120 million users in April 2026, is named with Plaid and Finicity among the few US data aggregators. In identity verification Plaid entered a field TechCrunch called crowded, citing Socure and Persona. In cash-flow underwriting, Experian launched a Credit + Cashflow Score in November 2025 that does not use Plaid data, while FICO moved its real-time UltraFICO upgrade onto Plaid. Banks are the other contest: JPMorganChase signed data-access contracts in 2025 with middlemen including Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, which make up more than 95% of the data pulls on its systems. Plaid passed $500 million in annual recurring revenue in Q4 2025, its CFO told Fortune.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]
Data as of Nov 2, 2026 · Plaid profile updated Oct 22, 2026 · 43 sources cited on this page · 56 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
What has Plaid said about its competitors, and what do rivals' filings say about Plaid?
Plaid is private and files no 10-K, so it has no Competition section or AI risk factors to quote; its executives have named rivals in interviews instead. In May 2022 then-CTO Jean-Denis Greze told American Banker: "We've been competing with Yodlee, MX and Finicity since day one at the company," adding that customers found Plaid connected to more than 12,000 financial institutions against "something like 5,000" for Stripe. American Banker listed Q2, Alloy, Mantl and Nice Actimize among long-standing vendors in onboarding, identity and fraud; Greze said such companies only look at a slice of fraud or risk.[1]
CEO Zach Perret has been as direct. When Stripe launched Financial Connections in May 2022, he accused Stripe on Twitter of using interviews with Plaid and RFPs sent under NDA to learn how to build it, which Stripe's Jay Shah denied, and wrote on Hacker News that Stripe wrapped "two aggregators, MX and Finicity" and that its listed rates were 30-200% higher than Plaid's. In June 2025 he told PYMNTS that "we're competing with paper and old processes".[5][6][16]
Rivals' filings name Plaid more plainly. Envestnet's 2023 10-K, filed February 28, 2024, listed "Intuit, Inc., Plaid Inc., Finicity Corporation (a subsidiary of Mastercard International Inc.) and Fiserv, Inc" as representative competitors in its Envestnet Data & Analytics business; Yodlee was Envestnet's open finance and data analytics subsidiary until its sale to STG. Mastercard's 2025 10-K says it faces "competition from companies that provide alternatives to our other solutions, including open finance", and Visa's fiscal 2025 10-K describes Tink as its open banking platform, from account verification and balance checks to A2A payment initiation.[2][4][17][7]
The Justice Department's suit against Visa's $5.3 billion purchase of Plaid argued that the merger would "extinguish a nascent competitor" and entrench Visa in online debit; Visa abandoned the deal in January 2021, its CEO saying Plaid's capabilities were "complementary to Visa's, not competitive." On AI, the competitive risk that listed peers put in risk factors appears for Plaid in the press: PYMNTS noted in May 2026 that ChatGPT's and Perplexity's finance tools rely on Plaid's infrastructure but that competition could intensify if AI firms pursue direct bank integrations.[8][18]
Who competes with Plaid in each of its businesses?
One row per competitor. Scale figures are each company's own or its filing's, with the period; they measure different things and are not comparable with each other or with Plaid's figures.
| Competitor | Where they compete | Dated scale figure | How they compare on AI | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mastercard (Finicity; Mastercard Open Finance) | US bank-data aggregation and cash-flow data: Plaid's then-CTO named Finicity among the rivals Plaid has competed with since day one (2022); Envestnet's 2023 10-K lists Finicity with Plaid; FICO built UltraFICO with Finicity in 2018 and moved its real-time upgrade onto Plaid in November 2025 | Over 95% of U.S. deposit accounts connected (January 2026) | Its 2025 10-K lists open finance among the data sources behind the products it builds from its data and AI assets | American Banker, May 2022; Envestnet 10-K FY2023; American Banker, Nov 2025; Mastercard, Jan 2026; Mastercard 10-K FY2025[1][2][13][3][17] |
| MX Technologies | US data aggregation: named by Plaid's then-CTO as a rival since day one (2022); one of the two aggregators behind Stripe's Financial Connections at launch; listed by Banking Dive among large fintechs that access bank data as JPMorgan introduced data fees (July 2025) | Over 1,700 financial institutions served (April 2026) | Announced a conversational Financial Intelligence Assistant for banks, credit unions and fintechs (June 30, 2026); developing an AI-native Growth Agent with Primitive (April 2026) | American Banker, May 2022; TechCrunch, May 2022; Banking Dive, Jul 2025; GlobeNewswire, Apr and Jun 2026[1][6][19][20][21] |
| Yodlee (STG) | Bank-data aggregation: American Banker calls Yodlee a data aggregation platform that competes with Plaid; Envestnet sold it to private equity firm STG, closing September 2, 2025; JPMorganChase signed data-access contracts with both | Data from approximately 19,000 sources (Envestnet 10-K, 2023) | Envestnet's 2023 10-K says its natural language processing and machine learning use several deep learning AI models to enrich the data; no later AI figure in the sources cited | American Banker, Jun 2025; PR Newswire, Sep 2025; Envestnet 10-K FY2023; CNBC, Nov 2025[22][4][2][14] |
| Stripe (Financial Connections) | Bank-account linking and data: Stripe, a former Plaid partner, launched Financial Connections in May 2022 in direct competition with Plaid | $1.9 trillion total volume on Stripe, 2025; Financial Connections says it connects instantly to over 97% of US bank accounts | Financial Connections lets users share data in agentic workflows, with token-efficient tools for agents (undated page, retrieved November 2026); with OpenAI, Stripe developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol (2025 annual letter) | TechCrunch, May 2022; Finextra, May 2022; Stripe, Feb 2026; Stripe product page[6][5][23][24] |
| Visa (Tink) | Open banking data and pay by bank: Tink is Visa's open banking platform in regions such as Europe and Latin America, and Visa A2A launched in the UK in fiscal 2025, where Plaid is one of Visa's Open Finance Networks; the Justice Department argued Visa's abandoned purchase of Plaid would extinguish a nascent competitor | Thousands of bank connections on Tink's open banking payments network (September 30, 2025) | Visa Intelligent Commerce: tokenized credentials with authentication for agent-driven transactions and AI-powered personalization (fiscal 2025 10-K) | Visa 10-K FY2025; Plaid, Jun 2025; Payments Dive, Jan 2021[7][25][8] |
| Trustly | Bank-data access and pay by bank: American Banker names Plaid, Finicity and Trustly among the small number of data aggregators that pull consumer bank data for fintechs (July 2025); Aeropay's CEO named Trustly and Plaid as its rivals in certain areas of US pay by bank (August 2024) | More than 120 million users worldwide (April 2026) | Not disclosed in the sources cited | American Banker, Jul 2025; Payments Dive, Aug 2024; PYMNTS, Apr 2026[10][26][9] |
| Socure | Identity verification and fraud: TechCrunch cited Socure in the "increasingly crowded, and well-funded" identity verification space Plaid entered in May 2022 | More than 6,000 customers; $42.7 million in new bookings (Q3 2026) | Acquired agentic operations platform Fravity, now RiskOS_Agents, which automates fraud, risk and compliance investigation inside RiskOS (Q3 2026) | TechCrunch, May 2022; Business Wire, Oct 2026[11][27] |
| Persona | Identity verification: named by TechCrunch alongside Socure and SentiLink as Plaid moved into identity verification (May 2022) | $2 billion valuation after a $200 million Series D (April 2025) | Persona AI (Persona Assistant, Persona Agents, Persona Extend), launched October 29, 2026; powers hundreds of thousands of identity decisions in production | TechCrunch, May 2022; PR Newswire, Apr 2025; Business Wire, Oct 2026[11][28][29] |
| Experian | Cash-flow credit scoring: its Credit + Cashflow Score (November 2025) is aggregator-agnostic and does not use Plaid data, though Experian partnered with Plaid earlier in 2025 for its Cashflow Score; Cornerstone Advisors' Ron Shevlin told American Banker that for lenders looking to extend credit access, Experian's broader model may offer higher lift than FICO plus Plaid, but with more complexity | $7.51 billion revenue, fiscal year ended March 2025 | Experian Assistant, which Experian says uses AI to speed the credit modeling lifecycle, from feature selection to coding, deployment and model documentation (undated page, retrieved November 2026) | American Banker, Nov 2025 (two articles); Reuters, May 2025; Experian product page[12][13][30][31] |
What companies are most similar to Plaid?
The closest alternatives are other networks that connect apps to bank accounts. Descriptions are each company's own or its filing's.
| Company | Why it is similar | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Mastercard Open Finance | Connects over 95% of U.S. deposit accounts and supports thousands of apps and services (January 2026) | Account opening, lending decisions, account-to-account payments and small-business insights, the uses Mastercard's 2025 10-K lists for its open finance solutions[3][17] |
| MX Technologies | Provides end-to-end solutions for financial institutions and fintechs to connect to, understand and act on customers' financial data | Banks and credit unions that want an institution-branded AI assistant inside their own digital banking (announced June 2026)[21] |
| Stripe Financial Connections | Lets users link financial accounts and share permissioned data from a broad set of 12,000 financial institutions (undated page, retrieved November 2026) | Businesses on Stripe that verify accounts for ACH Direct Debit and payouts and check balances before debits[24] |
| Tink (Visa) | Open banking from data access (account verification, balance check, personal finance management) to A2A payment initiation | Europe and Latin America, the regions Visa's fiscal 2025 10-K names for Tink[7] |
| Akoya | A data network connecting more than 4,000 banks, credit unions and brokerages with financial apps through permissioned APIs, without shared credentials or screen scraping (October 2026) | Banks that want aggregators and apps to connect through APIs instead of credential-based access, as TD Bank U.S. announced in October 2026[32] |
Where is the contest around Plaid sharpest in 2026?
Banks now charge for the data. JPMorganChase began notifying data aggregators of new data-access fees in July 2025, Banking Dive reported; by November it had signed updated contracts with fintech middlemen including Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, which make up more than 95% of the data pulls on its systems, CNBC reported. Plaid said it would not pass its fees on to its clients.[19][14][33]
Banks are also building around the aggregators. American Banker reported in July 2025 on Solo, a bank-led alternative to data aggregators like Plaid; a Plaid spokesperson called a critic's claim that only Plaid gets paid when the same data is collected again a misrepresentation of how it operates and said half of Americans with a bank account have relied on Plaid. In October 2026 TD Bank U.S. chose Akoya's Open Finance Solution so more aggregators and apps can connect through APIs, reducing reliance on credential-based data access.[10][32]
Credit bureaus are converging on the same data. FICO's real-time UltraFICO upgrade runs on Plaid's cash-flow data (November 2025), after FICO first released UltraFICO in 2018 with Finicity, now owned by Mastercard; the week before, Experian launched a Credit + Cashflow Score that does not use Plaid data. Cornerstone Advisors' Ron Shevlin told American Banker that many lenders will likely adopt both scores or use them in parallel. Plaid's LendScore 2, launched October 6, 2026, is a cash-flow score Plaid says delivers 42% greater predictive power than traditional credit data alone.[13][12][34]
AI agents reopen the payment-method contest. Plaid's head of payments Brian Dammeir told Payments Dive in October 2026 that agents acting for consumers could see bank payments adopted more broadly, and on whether the result favors cards or bank payments said "Only time will tell." JPMorganChase said the same month that outside agents may read some account data through a connector like Plaid but may not move money, and Visa's 2025 10-K describes Visa Intelligent Commerce for agent-driven card transactions.[35][36][7]
What does the Plaid profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Plaid AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 22, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 17 dated moves, 11 use cases and 27 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| LendScore cash-flow credit score | Risk score blending real-time cash-flow data and account-connection activity, launched in beta with a waitlist in October 2025; Plaid says it improves predictive performance by 25% over traditional credit data and added adverse-action explainability attributes in May 2026. | Pilot | [37][38] |
| LendScore 2 and LendScore Arc | An upgraded family of cash-flow credit-risk scores (Ls2, plus specialized Auto, Short Term and Home Lending models) and LendScore Arc, a transformer-based model reading transaction sequences; Plaid reports Ls2 Auto cuts delinquency 26% among deep-subprime applicants, Ls2 Short Term approves 63% more borrowers and Ls2 Home Lending approves 6.3% more borrowers, each at the same risk level versus traditional credit data. | In production | [34] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 13, 2026 | JPMorganChase blocks outside AI agents from moving money | On JPMorganChase's Q3 2026 earnings call, CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank will not let outside AI agents such as Meta's Muse or Instinct log in and act on a customer's behalf, citing the risk of 'rogue agents... thousands of them'. A JPMorganChase spokeswoman confirmed to CNBC that agents can still read some account data, such as balances, in a read-only way if a connector like Plaid has the user's credentials, but cannot send money or pay bills; JPMorganChase is separately piloting its own internal cash-management AI tool, Smart Cash. | [36] |
| Oct 6, 2026 | LendScore 2, LendScore Arc and Instant Link launched | Plaid's fall release added LendScore 2 (Ls2), an upgraded family of cash-flow credit-risk scores Plaid says delivers 42% greater predictive power than traditional credit data alone, with specialized Auto, Short Term (BNPL) and Home Lending models; LendScore Arc, Plaid's first transformer-based credit model built on its Sequential Foundation Model, which Plaid reports lifts predictive power 20% for deep-subprime and 24% for super-prime borrowers in early testing versus the core model; and Instant Link, which lets a borrower permission cash-flow and network data once through Plaid's Consumer Reporting Agency so later lenders can retrieve insights in under two seconds without a repeat bank-account connection. | [34] |
| Feb 26, 2026 | Employee share sale at an $8 billion valuation | Up 31% from April 2025 and still 40% below the 2021 peak of $13.4 billion, according to TechCrunch. | [39] |
| Oct 20, 2025 | ML risk scores, LendScore beta and a new CFO | Plaid announced a suite of ML-powered risk scores including LendScore (beta), a cash-flow credit score it says increases predictive accuracy by 25% versus traditional credit data alone; the same day it named Seun Sodipo, formerly of Glossier and Stripe, as CFO. | [37][40] |
| Sep 16, 2025 | Renewed data-access agreement with JPMorganChase | The renewed agreement includes a pricing structure; CNBC later reported that middlemen like Plaid had for years paid nothing to tap bank systems and that JPMorgan had signed updated contracts with aggregators making up more than 95% of data pulls on its systems. | [41][14] |
| Apr 3, 2025 | $575 million round at a $6.1 billion valuation | A round led by Franklin Templeton to cover employee RSU tax obligations and a tender; Perret wrote that revenue grew over 25% in 2024 and that new products were more than 20% of ARR. Plaid said it would not go public in 2025. | [42] |
| Jan 12, 2021 | Visa abandons its $5.3 billion takeover of Plaid | Visa ended the deal about two months after the Justice Department sued to block it on antitrust grounds; the company said the decision was mutual, and Plaid stayed independent. | [43] |
Who are Plaid's biggest competitors?
In bank-data aggregation, the rivals Plaid's own executives have named are Finicity (owned by Mastercard), MX and Yodlee, plus Stripe since it launched Financial Connections in May 2022. Visa's Tink and Trustly compete in open banking and pay by bank, Socure and Persona in identity verification, and Experian in cash-flow credit scoring.
What companies are similar to Plaid?
The closest are other bank-data networks: Mastercard Open Finance, which says it connects over 95% of U.S. deposit accounts; MX, which serves over 1,700 financial institutions; Yodlee, now owned by STG; Stripe Financial Connections; Visa's Tink in Europe and Latin America; and Akoya, which connects more than 4,000 banks, credit unions and brokerages through APIs.
Is Stripe a competitor of Plaid?
Yes, in bank-account linking. Stripe, once a Plaid partner, launched Financial Connections in May 2022 in direct competition with Plaid. Perret publicly objected to how Stripe built it and said it wrapped MX and Finicity, which Stripe disputed. Stripe's product page now says it connects instantly to over 97% of US bank accounts.
Plaid vs Finicity: how do they compare?
Both connect apps and lenders to US bank accounts. Finicity is owned by Mastercard, which says its open finance network connects over 95% of U.S. deposit accounts (January 2026); Plaid says it connects to more than 12,000 institutions. FICO built UltraFICO with Finicity in 2018 but moved its real-time upgrade onto Plaid in November 2025.
Does Plaid compete with the credit bureaus?
Partly. Experian's Credit + Cashflow Score, launched in November 2025, combines credit and cash-flow data and does not use Plaid data, while Plaid's LendScore 2 (October 2026) is a cash-flow credit score Plaid says has 42% greater predictive power than traditional credit data alone. Plaid also partners with FICO and has partnered with Experian.
Do banks compete with Plaid?
Increasingly they charge it and build around it. JPMorganChase signed data-access contracts in 2025 with middlemen including Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya; banks are developing bank-led alternatives such as Solo; and TD Bank U.S. chose Akoya's API platform in October 2026 so aggregators connect through APIs, reducing reliance on credential-based data access.
- Plaid expands beyond data aggregation into ID and fraud tech
- Envestnet, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023
- Data for the common good: Open finance in the public sector
- Envestnet, Inc. completes sale of Yodlee, Inc. to STG
- Plaid accuses Stripe of underhanded tactics over new open banking product
- From partners to competitors: What Stripe's latest move means for Plaid
- Visa Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025
- Visa terminates $5.3B acquisition of Plaid after DOJ antitrust suit
- Trustly Marks Pay by Bank Milestone With 120-Plus Million Users
- Inside Solo's new bank-led alternative to data aggregators
- Plaid officially expands into identity and income verification, fraud prevention and account funding
- Experian releases new score with credit and cashflow data
- FICO upgrades its cash-flow-powered score with real-time data
- JPMorgan Chase wins fight with fintech firms over fees to access customer data
- Plaid's CFO sees AI usage taking off internally
- Plaid Moves From Data Pipes to Identity Engine for Agentic Finance (interview with Zach Perret)
- Mastercard Incorporated Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Financial Data Aggregators Get Pulled Into the AI Finance Race
- Fintechs blast JPMorgan over data fees
- Primitive Launches the Complete AI Agent Operating System for Financial Services
- MX Announces Financial Intelligence Assistant to Turn Conversational AI into a Growth Engine for Financial Institutions and Their Customers
- Envestnet agrees to sell Yodlee to private equity firm STG
- Stripe publishes 2025 annual letter and announces tender offer to provide liquidity to current and former employees
- Stripe Financial Connections: open banking for fast, reliable money movement (undated page, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Powering Smarter Pay-by-Bank in the UK with Visa and Plaid
- Aeropay targets pay-by-bank evolution in US
- Socure Q3 2026 Results: The Platform Built to Fight AI Fraud Achieved $42.7 Million in New Bookings and Doubled Customer Count
- Persona raises $200M at $2B valuation to build the verified identity layer for an agentic AI world
- Persona Introduces Persona AI, Advancing Its Vision for the Next Era of Identity
- Credit data firm Experian forecasts 6% to 8% annual organic revenue growth
- Experian Assistant (undated page, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- TD and Akoya Announce Plans to Modernize How Clients Connect and Share Financial Data
- JPMorganChase reaches deal to charge Plaid for customer data
- Bringing cash flow insights to every lender with Instant Link & LendScore 2
- AI agents won't pay the way you do
- JPMorgan Chase blocks outside AI agents like Muse, Instinct from directly accessing accounts
- Product Updates - October 2025
- Everything we announced at Plaid Effects 2026
- Plaid valued at $8B in employee share sale
- Plaid names Seun Sodipo CFO as it enters next phase of fintech growth
- JPMorganChase and Plaid announce renewed data access agreement
- Fintech Plaid raises $575M at a $6.1B valuation, says it will not go public in 2025
- Visa abandons takeover of Plaid after DOJ raises antitrust concerns
When Plaid moves on AI, you'll read it here first.
when a bank, fintech or regulator moves on AI, it is in the next morning's brief · six sourced stories · 7 am PT · free
plus every regulation, bank and agent page update, the morning after · leave any morning