This past week, Stripe announced an open banking (or open finance) initiative with Stripe Financial Connections.
Stripe laid out its plans explaining they were “enabling businesses to establish direct connections with their customers’ bank accounts that power a wide range of financial processes.” This is effectively, Plaid’s main business model – and one they have accomplished quite well. Interestingly, the announcement by Stripe appeared to rub Plaid co-founder Zach Perret the wrong way as he took to Twitter to obliquely express his thoughts on the Stripe announcement.
Plaid founder deletes tweets after the Mob has a word with him. Then posts that Stripe, who straight-up copied is product, is now his friend. This is the power of the Mob. pic.twitter.com/iWS9K486Vm
— Ryan Breslow (@ryantakesoff) May 6, 2022
Next take: Welcome to the fintech party, @stripe
— Zachary Perret (@zachperret) May 6, 2022
Jay Shah from Stripe announced the launch of Financial Connections in a series of Tweets.
We’re launching Financial Connections today, enabling businesses and their customers to safely share their financial data. Businesses can go directly to Stripe to access a privacy-first authentication flow and our new data API. https://t.co/wNxNS9Dube
— Jay Shah (@jay_ssh) May 4, 2022
Perret quickly responded with a now-deleted Tweet stating that Shah interviewed with Plaid over the past few years effectively throwing shade at the announcement.
Stripe co-founder John Collison added perspective to the digital dust-up with the below Tweet.
Patrick shared this note internally about the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle. Glad to put it behind us, and I'm look forward to continued vibrant competition in fintech (which customers benefit from!) in the future. pic.twitter.com/LOnlGIPDdq
— John Collison (@collision) May 6, 2022
Apparently, Shah interviewed with Plaid eight years ago – so a lifetime in Fintech years.
Collision acknowledged the deleted Tweet stating:
“Zach ended up deleting the tweet in question, which is gracious of him. We understand that his perspective on the whole thing may still differ. Either way, we still do lots with Plaid. They’re a great company and we look forward to finding more ways to work together.”
So everyone is cool now – right? Positive intent all around.
Regardless the world of open banking is enormous and we are just at the beginning of this meaningful transformation to Fintech everywhere.
