Plaid looking to get into commercial data transfer

Plaid, a leading data connection fintech, is looking to expand into commercial finance.  

Ethan Geiling, leader of strategic financial institution partnerships at Plaid, said the company historically has focused on consumer data, allowing finance apps to access a consumer’s data from financial institutions for various purposes.  

But recently, Plaid is “seeing demand” for commercial data services, Geiling said this week at Bank Automation Summit 2025 in Nashville, Tenn.  

“Apps and services in the ecosystem are coming to us and asking for commercial data, business data, and we’re figuring out how we can do that,” he said.  

Commercial data is not always directly covered under Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which requires financial institutions to share certain consumer financial data, Geiling said. Also known as the Personal Financial Data Rights rule or open banking rule, Section 1033 requires uniformity in how banks expose their commercial banking data via application programming interface, or API. 

“We are in discussions to figure out how we can make that work,” he said.

Growing APIs

Plaid works with equipment manufacturers like John Deere, which Geiling called one of the fintech’s “favorite customers.” Plaid is working to make the open banking “ecosystem more safe and secure” and transition away from screen scraping models to APIs, he said during the summit. 

“At this point, 80% of our traffic is on API, and the point I want to emphasize is that it’s all been driven by consumer demand,” he said. “It was not necessarily a regulation-driven marketplace. It was consumers driving it and the market leading the evolution.” 

Plaid services 1 in 2 U.S. consumers today, Geiling said, or approximately 142 million, according to Equipment Finance News’ estimate. The company employs approximately 1,000 people and has raised more than $734 million of venture capital since its founding in 2013, according to Crunchbase. 

Plaid is reportedly looking to raise another $300 million to $400 million in a tender offer through Goldman Sachs & Co. Plaid was valued at its last funding round at about $13 billion in early 2021, according to Bloomberg. 

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