Plaid Technologies, a fintech start-up that smoothens the accessibility of peer-to-peer payment companies such as Venmo from customers’ bank accounts, has secured $44m in its latest round of Series B funding.
The tech firm has announced that investment divisions of Citi and American Express took part in the funding round, although little is known to what extent either contributed to the investment.
Goldman Sachs Investment Partners is the lead investor in the Series B round of funding, as was announced in mid-2016 when the round was made public. American Express and Citi’s stake in the round has only been revealed this week.
“We’re excited to have both Citi Ventures and American Express Ventures as part of Plaid’s journey to help build a more inclusive financial ecosystem,” said Zach Perret, CEO and co-founder of Plaid. “We built Plaid to help developers, consumers, and leading institutions create and embrace financial innovation. These new investments will enable Plaid to continue delivering on its mission to advance innovation and create seamless and secure user experiences for customers.”
Arvind Purushotham, co-head, venture investing, Citi Ventures, said in a statement: “Plaid has emerged as the preferred choice for developers when it comes to financial services APIs, creating opportunities to build new and more innovative interfaces for bank customers to transact.
“We’re excited to support Plaid as they continue to deliver better access to clean, high-quality financial data, enabling innovation and a secure infrastructure for the financial services ecosystem.”
Plaid has developed at an incredible rate in a short time, since publically launching in 2015. It’s API technology allows other fintech and payments service providers access to customer bank accounts, whilst providing all data and analytical tools to detect and prevent fraud. The company already provides this service to multiple high-level contracts, connecting millions of customers.
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