Plaid, the service used by Venmo, Acorns, Robinhood, and more, may owe you some money (2024)

FAQs

Why is Venmo forcing me to use Plaid? ›

Venmo uses Plaid to verify your bank account information and, periodically, your bank account balance to check if you have enough funds to cover certain transactions.

Yes, in general using Plaid for banking is safe. Plaid follows strict security protocols to ensure sensitive data stays out of the hands of fraudsters. On top of that, for consumers, Plaid allows you to view and control exactly what data they've shared.

Why does Robinhood need my bank password? Robinhood uses Plaid to allow its users to link their bank accounts to the app. Robinhood doesn't get this information. It goes only to Plaid, which is a financial intermediary with a good reputation for security.

Plaintiffs allege that in connection with the linking and verification process, Plaid misled them and violated their privacy and the privacy of the putative class members by obtaining data from their financial accounts without authorization and by obtaining their bank login information through its user interface, known ...

Plaid uses the highest levels of security possible to keep your information safe. When you link your checking account with a financial application through Plaid, the company instantly encrypts sensitive data and shares it with the application using a secure connection.

Plaid does not charge consumers for using our services.

Widely used banks that use our instant bank linking system (Plaid) Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, US Bank, USAA, Fidelity, PNC, Capital One, TD Bank, SunTrust, Navy Federal, BB&T, etc.

To keep their promise of instant trading but reduce the risk to their bottom line, they needed other solutions, one of which was Plaid. While Robinhood's team already had a robust internal risk model in place, they needed a way to monitor customer activity outside the platform.

Encryption. Sensitive information, such as your Social Security number, are encrypted before they're stored. In addition, our app and website securely communicate with our servers using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol with up-to-date configurations and ciphers.

How to fund Robinhood without Plaid? ›

Venmo, the wildly popular mobile app for peer-to-peer payments and money transfers, relies heavily on Plaid's services. When you use Venmo to send or receive funds, the app needs to verify your bank account information and ensure you have sufficient funds for transactions. This is where Plaid comes into play.

According to its website, Plaid is certified in internationally recognized security standards, like ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and is SSAE18 SOC2 compliant. Once you have used Plaid to authenticate your bank information, the connection is in place and can be used to transfer the financial information that you authorize.

Plaid is an app which can help you securely link your bank or other financial accounts to apps you want to use — like Venmo, Acorns, Varo and YNAB. In fact, Plaid works with 12,000 different financial institutions around the world, to help over 7,000 apps offer services safely to their customers.

If you receive an error message that says something like, “We lost connection with your bank,” you'll need to delete the bank account from your Venmo account and add it back again. This can happen if you update your online banking password.

If you see this error message, there may be some steps you need to take before you can connect your financial account via Plaid successfully. Some financial institutions require you to take specific steps to enable your accounts to be linked to third-parties like Plaid.