[cliqueiq]

I see a lot of hate for Plaid here. I was my understanding that the only reason you would really ever use Plaid is because they were able give programmatic access to flat-rate fee ACH payments of basically any size. Obviously they were never something you could compare to Stripe. I wonder what's gonna happen with in the near future, especially considering Plaid was obviously stepping on the toes of the interchange-rates of the likes of Visa.

[jaf656s]

Plaid provides an api to access transaction history and verify bank account ownership.

They don't do ACH transfers.

[cliqueiq]

https://fin.plaid.com/articles/inside-ach-payments-with-stri...

"""To get started with ACH payments, you need a system that can connect you (the originator of the ACH transaction) with an Originating Depository Financial Institution (ODFI). Additionally, that system should be able to give updates on the status of the payment and give the developer an interface to authenticate, verify, and charge the user on demand.

That’s where Stripe comes in. In January, the payments infrastructure giant debuted support for ACH payments through its platform alongside a partnership with us here at Plaid. Now, Stripe users can authenticate their customers through Plaid (or, if they must, micro-deposits) and then charge them through ACH."""

Am I misunderstanding something?

EDIT:

Okay so maybe they weren't doing the transfers, but they were certainly facilitating them and adding to the adoption of more ACH based payments (which means less credit-card payments). Same conflict of interest applies. What does Visa care about bank account verifications?