Interview with Zach Perret (Plaid CEO) | Fintech Insider at Money20/20

welcome to fin tech insider interviews I'm Jason Bates at money 2020 Amsterdam and today I'm thrilled to be joined by Zach Barret CEO plaid hey Thank You ramming it thank you for being here how's it going very well very well it's been a busy conference but I'm excited to be here for the chat well you seem to be making lots of headlines but for those people living in under a rock that don't know who you are who or what plant does can you give us your elevator pitch sure so plaid we build infrastructure for FinTech companies and the core concept is that most of the functionality that that you might have in a bank branch when you're standing there and talking to a banker we want to take that functionality wrap it in the set of api's and deliver that to you as a consumer wherever you want to go so that might mean that you're using an app to interact with your bank account be that to pay a friend apply for a loan make an investment transfer some funds and we build the infrastructure that allows that app to connect to the bank account on the backend okay so is this sort of a middleman play that you connect banks with fintechs or do you go back direct to consumers we go directly to the to the FinTech product so we are we are a kind of a b2b provider and but the way that we think about our products is that we are very consumer oriented so mission is to make money easier for everyone and truly we think about how do we how do we get the best possible products in the hands of consumers which means we spend a great deal of time on building an ecosystem enabling developers creating a FinTech a landscape such that anyone can create any financial product that they want to which then leads to more products for consumers which we think is a way so I buy into it sounds amazing but I also know the the infrastructure in the US is is well-known for being somewhat archaic and that companies like Yardley have been around for a long time screen scraping things in order to kind of pull that together how's plaid different like like is it using sort of same approaches or is it is it using api's into banks how does it work it's a great question so in the u.s. there are about 15,000 financial institutions and building all sorts of different types of products you know 3,000 or 5,000 or so regulated banks have another 5,000 or so credit unions and community banks and then another so non-bank but bank like products so things like brokerage houses and so and so forth and so and when you when you do integration into all those you have to have a variety of different methodologies and we focus on deep partnerships with with the financial institutions and building directly into API today that they create helping them create AP is as necessary and from time to time we will do integrations with their service or brothers or if we have to weaken screen script and the vast majority of our data that comes from other sources less than one percent comes from screen shipping in the US and as we think about expanding internationally we're so excited for and kind of the the the regulatory clarity actually that exists here show has to with PSC to open banking and that means that it's a lot more straightforward to do integrations into financial institutions and of course our focus is on building the right product for the consumer and the right products for the developer that is that it's kind of using plat on the backend and so we're committed to whatever methodology we need to have in order to give that that ideal user experience so you've announced your UK and European expansion PSD to open banking regulations seems like a perfect time although actually you could turn around and say well actually it's easy for fintechs to connect directly with open banking or PST - what's the value add for plat well let's be clear we announced UK we haven't announced Europe okay sorry yet and but we've been we've been so excited to watch them check grow and flourish in the UK and there are so many new companies there it's something like 1500 different FinTech companies six or seven pin taking accordions it's been a really incredible journey to watch just the growth of this ecosystem the growth in the market and contrast that with the u.s. where there's only I think I think eight unicorns in the u.s. right and and so just it's it's so amazing to see the UK grow and build these these huge and ever-growing companies and to your question they're us a bit about how we differentiate when perhaps if in tech you go straight to a bank for us data access is the foundation it's the first step in terms of what we do and we focused quite a lot on building services on top of that of course and so the first step for us is an amazing developer experience we want someone to go end-to-end developer could be in a hackathon they can build a project in an afternoon and get it deployed out to all of the banks in the US or all of the banks in the UK and so that's that's the starting point and then we create a lot of solutions on top of so take for example a lot of the work that we've done in lending and building products that can do better analytics on top of transaction data can help better understand cash flows allow someone to better understand the way that they might make a loan to a consumer and how that consumer might repay so we do think that bid access is really foundational but it's the first step in the product that we build and so have you seen I guess through the journey of plaid changes in in banks views of aggregators and fintechs views of aggregators you know it almost used to be a dirty word it's like those guys who get all the data and distant to mediators and yet now they're investing in you like what's the mark how does that market of old well we certainly hope that the platform that we build is not a dirty word anymore but we we've seen a huge change in a way that that the industry thinks about technology actually so I would say it's actually that broad where where financial services banks particularly are thinking about technology in a massively different way you heard a few years ago JPMorgan in the u.s. say that we are actually a technology company yeah not that we are a bank I mean that that represents just a mindset shift a sea change and so in the early stages of what we were building of course there were a lot of questions a lot of hesitations and we were enabling technology in a business model that has historically been done only via paper and it was a highly profitable sector banking forever is had had a large amount of profit there and so we were enabling technology in a way that might shift the profit pools and over time that what we've seen is we've had this relentlessly kind of partnership focused mentality where we say to the banks we want to help you build the best-in-class technology for your consumers and you say that the thin tax we're gonna help you build amazing products for the consumers as well so we've seen it come full circle and what was originally hesitation is now actually being met with partnership and investment and so the banks both investing in us as a company but but more frequently we're actually seeing the banks doing partnerships with fin tech companies in distributing fin tech products into their user bases and we've seen a bit of that here in the UK and across Europe and it's still early stages but I suspect that we will see a great deal more over the coming few years so we get a lot of viewers and listeners from UK fintechs UK banks how would they know that they should come and talk to you like what what would their use case be that it's like you should definitely come contact plan the short answer is if you're building anything in FinTech we'd love to talk okay we first and foremost are focused on building an amazing ecosystem and when we look at the ecosystem that exists across the UK particularly in London and there's there's tons and tons of people building really innovative products and we're just excited to be a part of that and in overtime we take a very long view we take a decade's long view of how we think about FinTech and so we want to be investing in the ecosystems where we're seeing the most growth and the most possibility for for future products and so we'd love to talk to you about anything truly and and then if you're doing anything that interfaces with a bank directly and chances are we can help and and the best way that we describe how we think about our customers that is that they determine our product or a bath so if you have a problem you're thinking about something that you say yeah I really wish this existed someone should just do this for me come talk to us now that's the feedback that we need to build a product that is ideal for you and what's the best ways fine plan so come to us on the internet you can find us at plod calm and or you can find us on Twitter or if you have questions feel free to email me directly I'm Zak applaud comm perfect Zak thanks for joining us thank you so much for having me you

Channel: 11:FS

Views: 22,556

Keywords: finonair, homescreen, fintech, financial technology, banking, bank, finance, neobank, app, application, best, financial services, fintech uk, fintech london, podcast, fintech insider, insurtech insider, blockchain insider, uk finance, finance news, financial news, financial markets, incumbent banks, finance knowledge, money, money 2020, plaid, CEO, visa, business news, Bottom Line, CNBC, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, us news, world news, paypal

Id: DhDX43vGBKQ

Length: 7min 55sec (475 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 14 2020