Plaid + Visa: Card Brands’ Influence on Data Use Rights

By Mark Castellani on The Capital

Visa today announced it has signed a deal to acquire Plaid Financial Inc. for $5.3 billion in an all-cash deal

Financial products and services that utilize Plaid as a trusted intermediary relies on data that falls into one of the following three buckets: Transaction Data, Account Information Data, and Identity Data.

Below I expand on Plaid’s role in the financial services ecosystem, the Card Brands’ (Visa) influence on data use rights, along with some thoughts on Transaction Data and Account Information Data, in particular, the type of parties involved, plus some 101 on data aggregation!

Transaction Data

Usually, information obtained at the point of sale (e.g., reference data describing transaction amount, time, place, payment methods, date, pending status, and category code). Transaction data can include information generated during auth and settlement, but it does NOT include Cardholder Data.

That said, what constitutes Transactions Data is a moving target at best. Data in the system morphs as it passes from transaction participants through the payment…