About Plaid
Plaid is an open banking platform connecting consumer bank accounts to fintech, online gaming and prediction market services. Its API links bank data, verifies identity, screens for money-laundering risk and initiates bank payments through a single integration. Zach Perret co-founded the company with William Hockey and has served as chief executive ever since.
Hockey stepped back from daily operations in 2019, though he remains on Plaid’s board. Visa agreed to acquire Plaid for $5.3 billion in 2020, but the deal collapsed the following year after regulators objected. Plaid’s valuation has since recovered to roughly $8 billion in early 2026, after dipping to $6.1 billion the previous year.
For online gaming and prediction market operators, Plaid replaces several separate vendors with one onboarding, identity and bank-connectivity flow. On the payments side, Pay by Bank, recurring payments and payout tools sit alongside dedicated ACH risk and settlement features. Fraud detection runs continuously across the player lifecycle, scoring behavioural signals drawn from Plaid’s wider banking network.
| Founded | 2013 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | San Francisco, United States |
| Payment Type | PSP / Open Banking Payments Platform |
| Key Products | Auth, Link, Transactions, Identity Verification, Transfer |
| Regulatory Status | FCA-authorised (Plaid Financial Limited, FRN 804718, UK); DNB-authorised (Plaid B.V., reg. R179714, EU) |
| Company-stated network scale | 12,000+ financial institutions across 20 countries (Europe); 100m+ global users |
| Company-stated fraud & risk data | 10,000+ behavioural signals across 500m+ accounts and 1bn+ devices; $230bn ACH risk training data |
Market Coverage & Operator Value
In Europe, two regulated entities, Plaid B.V. and Plaid Financial Limited, offer account information and payment initiation services under PSD2. Plaid does not publicly confirm gambling-specific licences or independently audited performance results for its gaming and prediction market deployments. Those details should not be assumed without further evidence from the operator’s own compliance review.
Plaid’s pitch to gaming and prediction market operators is consolidation rather than novelty. Onboarding, identity checks, AML screening and bank-linked payments come from one vendor instead of several. Operators evaluating Plaid should treat its guaranteed ACH settlement and AI-based risk tooling as claims to verify, not assume.
