Plaid

Plaid operates an open banking platform with a financial data API that connects applications to bank accounts, and publishes the official Plaid Dashboard MCP Server for AI-assisted management of Plaid integrations. The company describes its mission as enabling "all companies to build fintech solutions" through unified access to banking infrastructure and financial data.

The platform covers four main areas: payments via "Pay By Bank" for instant payments as well as recurring transactions and payouts; credit underwriting with real-time income data and categorized transaction history for lending decisions; onboarding through Plaid Link for account linking plus account and identity verification; and financial management with transaction categorization, merchant enrichment, and balance data.

According to the company, Plaid connects more than 12,000 financial institutions across 20 countries and serves over 100 million users worldwide, with a reported 99.99% uptime and 55% year-over-year growth in its European customer base. The company operates regulated entities in the Netherlands and the UK, authorized under the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2) for account information and payment initiation services, and does not hold customer funds itself.

The business model is API-based SaaS, billed per transaction or data access. Plaid was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey, who met as consultants at Bain & Co. in Atlanta and first demonstrated an early version of the technology at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in Manhattan — where they won.