We all wish more banks had API's! Our team is actively working with many more banks to launch them soon, but alas -- legacy infrastructure is slow to move!
Plaid founder here. Stripe does not integrate with any bank API's directly (AFAICT). They wrap two aggregators, MX and Finicity to build this product. (Also, not sure what MX products they are using, but MX itself is an aggregator of aggregators, including others such as Yodlee.)
On pricing, Stripe's listed rates are 30-200% higher than Plaid rates (perhaps due to high vendor costs). That said, if anyone does have feedback on where Plaid pricing is prohibiting new use cases, we'd love to hear! I'm zach at plaid if folks would like to discuss.
Yes, this really bugs me too. Unfortunately, the issue is on SVB's side. We're continuing to work on it, but I'd also recommend raising this with SVB directly if you are a customer.
Plaid founder here. Yes - our development environment is unpaid and many people use it for personal budgeting. You can sign up here: https://dashboard.plaid.com/signup
In the early days, we had a policy that we would not respond to RFP's. The time required vs. value does not make sense for startups (unless you've already been told you'll win and the RFP is just a formality).
Our Income product is distinct from Auth, and not used by Coinbase. The only way for a consumer's Income data to be collected, analyzed, and sent is when the consumer directly permissions an application to receive it.
Let's say you're applying for a loan via a lender that's a Plaid customer and you want to verify your income. In that case, you'd have to link your bank account with that lender (via Plaid), giving that lender permission to collect data about your Income. There's no way for that lender to get your income (or any other) data from Plaid without you explicitly connecting your account.
Plaid co-founder here. We don't resell data. In the case of Coinbase, they're setting up ACH transfers (see Auth on our products page), to avoid the 3-5 day delay in connecting a bank account for ACH.
Hey Aaron -- super sorry to hear about the situation. Soundcloud is a fantastic product and company. If you or your colleagues are interested, Plaid is hiring engineers in SF. You can find a full description here: https://plaid.com/careers.
Or, better, just drop me a line directly: zach [at] plaid [dot] com
This isn't strictly an immigration-focused question, but I'd love to hear about any best practices for equity grants for full-time international employees and employees that might start internationally while waiting for visa approval.
Unfortuantely, creating a memo post (hold on funds) is impossible given today's ACH infrastructure. That said, you can use Plaid to monitor funds availability throughout the lifetime of the transaction, and to predict the likelihood of clearing.
ABA/DDA are inherently less secure than online access credentials. An account can be directly debited if ABA/DDA are compromised, and they cannot be rotated without closing the account. Plaid tokenizes all this to avoid any potential issues -- and further, if credentials are somehow compromised they can be rotated very easily.