Astra has announced a new partnership with Plaid in order to enable Fintech companies to embed automated bank transfers.
The Astra team noted that they’re pleased to be working with Plaid, a data network powering the digital financial ecosystem, in order to offer an integrated solution for developers “to easily enable programmatic money movement for their customers.”
Through the partnership, companies will be able to use Plaid’s Auth product “in tandem with Astra’s automation platform to provide automated ACH transfers to their users with less friction.”
As mentioned in the announcement, developers may now create “advanced self-driving product experiences and enable programmatic money movement for their customers.” For instance, a new customer to an authorized application can “easily connect a bank account, have its ownership validated, and set up their first automation in a single session.”
With just a few clicks, the transfer automation will “continue to work – moving funds for that user until modified or canceled,” the update revealed while noting that another added benefit – customer deposits will “continuously grow, and debit cards always have available funds for spending without manual intervention from the user.”
Gil Akos, Co-founder and CEO at Astra, stated:
“Our team is constantly striving to make embedding financial transfers into applications as simple as possible. By providing transfer technology via our transfer API, which includes risk mitigation and automation, developers can spend less time on edge cases and more time on their product. This partnership will allow Astra to reach numerous new organizations facing complexities in facilitating transfers and we are excited to work with Plaid to streamline the process.”
For developers with a Plaid integration, adding Astra’s transfer automation is “extremely easy,” the announcement noted while adding that by using an instance of Plaid Link within an application, customers are able to “connect their bank account and set up automated bank transfers to or from that connected account in minutes.”
Astra’s lightweight API allows developers “to quickly provide transfer automations for users to solve a variety of needs” – a few examples mentioned in the documentation includes:
- Sweep extra funds above a balance threshold from one account to another
- One-time transfers between bank accounts in T+1 settlement up to $25k per transfer
- Automated refill programs to move funds into a depository account from a secondary account based on a target balance
Akos added:
“Managing money is hard and with more financial accounts than ever before, the complexity can be overwhelming. Utilizing Astra powered by Plaid, developers can bolt on time-saving automations to improve the financial wellbeing for users with as little friction as possible.”
Designed to connect and offer conductivity between financial accounts, Astra has “found traction with companies looking to increase the deposits from their users from technology like sweep transfers, as well as with those looking to improve throughput for debit cards using automate refill transfers, all of which are scalable and accessible through a single integration.”
The update also noted that Astra offers risk mitigation as a built-in service, “ensuring that all transfers originating from their platform will complete as intended or cancel without any negative impact on the customer and no loss of funds.”
The financial transfer market in the U.S. has “exploded,” and between traffic on the ACH network and AFT transfers, $62T was “transacted in 2020, almost none of which was automated.”
As for complexity, the average number of financial relationships per person has “increased from two to five in just three years, making the ability to move funds between accounts with low friction essential,” the announcement revealed.