NewTech Friday: Plaid – Enabling all companies to build fintech solutions

Ripsy Bandourian is the Head of Europe at US fintech Plaid. She tells us more about Plaid and its open banking network and payments platform.


What led to the creation of Plaid?

Plaid was founded in 2013 after CEO Zach Perret and his co-founder William Hockey were building a personal financial management app and realized how difficult it was to connect to financial accounts. The two co-founded Plaid to give developers easy, secure access to consumer-permissioned financial data capable of powering digital financial services. We expanded to the UK in 2019 and to the Netherlands in 2020 to continue to entrench across Europe. 

The past few years have created a massive shift in consumer behavior and in expectations – people now expect connected experiences between the apps and services they use. In financial services, Plaid has largely enabled that shift, making it safe and easy for people to use their financial information where they choose to, with the help of open banking regulation and developers building on Plaid’s platform. However, new gaps in the ecosystem emerge as digital finance evolves. For example, many people now are buying and selling cryptocurrency, but it is very disjointed from the rest of their financial lives. As such, we’ll continue to create new solutions that help developers fill these gaps and enable people to manage their money however they want. 

Today, Plaid’s mission remains similar to when the company first started: to unlock financial freedom for everyone. We want everyone to be able to manage their money however best suits them. We just released our 2022 edition of The Fintech Effect, a consumer survey of fintech adoption in the US and UK, and while it shows the majority of people are embracing digital finance, there has been a large uptick in financial stress, due to shifting economic and political climate. That tells us that there is plenty of work to be done to deliver the tools and services people need to manage their financial lives effectively. 

I joined Plaid in April of this year to help the company meet rising demand for its services as consumers all over the world demand seamless, secure and reliable digital financial tools. That’s an exciting charter, but Plaid’s mission is hugely personal to me – I’m originally from Armenia and have lived in four different countries across three different continents. As such, I know the pain of trying to manage a financial life without the right tools to enable me to take my financial history with me as I moved. Today, Plaid and the thousands of companies building on Plaid make that a little easier, which I found incredibly powerful. Unlocking financial freedom for everyone isn’t an easy mission, but it's one I believe in deeply.