In this episode of The Challengers, Josh Liggett and Zack Miller discuss Visa's $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid. Admittedly, data aggregation isn't that sexy but Zack thinks it is the underpinning of modern financial technology. Data agg enables customer financial data to move securely between financial institutions and fintech apps.
Zack thinks Visa is interested in leveraging Plaid's inroads into some of the top fintech firms (Robinhood, Venmo, Square) as the payments firm continues to build out its own ecosystem. Josh says that people don't really understand what Plaid does, and yet Plaid -- and solutions like it -- are vital to the growth of the digital finance industry.
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Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together