Plaid, a leading fintech company known for connecting consumer bank accounts to financial applications, has been steadily expanding its services to include lending, identity verification, credit reporting, anti-fraud, and payments. The company’s growth has been substantial, with a customer base that now includes large companies outside of the fintech industry, such as Venmo, SoFi, Chime, Rocket Money, H&R Block, Western Union, Affirm, Citi, and Shopify.
To support its expansion efforts, Plaid recently appointed Jennifer Taylor as its first president. With her extensive experience at larger companies like Salesforce, Facebook (now Meta), Adobe, and Cloudflare, Taylor brings valuable insights into scaling businesses and diversifying product offerings. Plaid’s move toward becoming a multi-product company has resulted in increased traction with enterprise and traditional financial institutions. In fact, the growth in these sectors is outpacing the rest of the company’s business.
Plaid’s enterprise customer base has surpassed 1,000, with hundreds of new enterprise customers added in the past year alone. The company aims to be a comprehensive solution for its customers by offering a suite of integrated products that address their broader business needs. Plaid’s identity, payments, and credit product lines are growing at a rate five times faster than its core account connectivity products. Notably, Plaid’s identity product is currently its fastest-growing line and is attracting non-fintech clients.
The startup is also gaining customers in various industries, including proptech, property management, e-commerce, and auto lending. Some notable clients include Zillow, Faire, Carvana, and CarMax. Overall, Plaid connects to 12,000 banks and financial institutions with 500 million connected accounts.
In June, Plaid introduced Layer, a new product designed to streamline the onboarding process for users by consolidating identity verification and bank account linking into one secure and instant experience. With Layer, the time it takes for someone to sign up for an app or service can be reduced by 90%. The simplified onboarding process has the potential to increase conversion rates for Plaid’s customers, and it aligns with the company’s focus on securing financial information in an AI-driven world.
Plaid has expressed its plans to go public, though no specific timeline has been set. The appointment of Jennifer Taylor as president, along with the hiring of a CFO, indicates that the company is actively working toward this goal. Plaid’s strategy of expanding into the enterprise market is a common approach among large fintech companies. Stripe and Brex, for example, have also made efforts to target enterprise customers.
The key question for Plaid will be how its approach resonates with investors when it eventually goes public. Nevertheless, with its growing customer base, diversifying product offerings, and commitment to simplifying financial processes, Plaid is well-positioned to make a significant impact in the fintech industry.