California-based Plaid, a company that provides tools and access for the development of a digitally-enabled financial system, has raised $425M (approx €357.4M) in its Series D round of funding.
Investors in this round
The round was led by Altimeter Capital, with participation from new investors including Silver Lake Partners and Ribbit Capital. In addition, existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, New Enterprise Associates, Spark Capital, and Thrive Capital also participated in this round.
The Netherlands is a key focus for Plaid’s international growth
In a blog post, Zachary Perret CEO and co-founder of Plaid, says, “Over the past year, the world has seen an unprecedented embrace of digital financial services. As a result, more tech companies are moving into finance, and fintech companies are rapidly looking to ntech experiences, and serve as the global connection to help European companies expand to the US and vice versa.”
With this raised capital, Plaid looks to scale its platform to support the massive growth in fintech and enable the next generation of digital financial services.
Keith Grose, Head of International at Plaid added, “The first phase of Plaid’s growth was about building the network to make fintech possible. Now, it’s inevitable that more and more interactions with money will move online. But it needs to be easier to view, understand and move your money for individuals and businesses. In Europe, this investment will help us extend our coverage to more geographies, expand our payment capabilities, and build a bridge across markets so that we can offer the most comprehensive open finance network that makes money easier for everyone.”
Plaid expanded to the Netherlands in April 2020. And now, with the recent funding, the company will dedicate resources to building out its product and engineering presence in Amsterdam.
The company aims to double its Amsterdam headcount by the end of Q2 and triple it by the end of this year, 2021 – you can apply here.
About Plaid
The company was launched by William Hockey and Zach Perret in 2012. Plaid is focused on democratising financial services through technology. The company makes it easier and safer for developers – from the smallest startups to the largest financial institutions – to build innovative financial services and applications.
It claims to offer consumer experiences, developer-friendly infrastructure, and intelligence tools to help users build the future of financial services.
Zachary Perret says, “Looking ahead, Plaid is focused on creating a single, integrated platform focused on helping innovators build digital financial products. Doing so requires scaling to meet the increased use of fintech, expanding globally to meet international demand, and delivering an expanded set of platform products to our customers. This will include continued investment in APIs that help people connect a complete view of their finances, as well as tools and services to support enhanced privacy, personalisation, decisioning, and automation. We could not be more excited for the years to come.”
The company works with thousands of fintech companies like Venmo and SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use.
Plaid’s network covers 11,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK, and Europe, as mentioned on the company’s website.
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