2026 / Excellence in Open Banking/Open Finance

Plaid

A connection layer for permissioned financial data.

Plaid lets people connect financial accounts to apps they choose and gives institutions tools to provide permissioned data through APIs.

Selection rationale

Why it was selected

Open finance depends on a connection that a person can authorize and that an institution can keep reliable. Plaid spans account linking, data access, and pay-by-bank flows across a large network.

Plaid reported more than 150 million consumers, more than 12,000 financial institutions, and 750,000 new app connections each day in 2025. It said 80% of traffic was already on or contractually committed to APIs in 2024. During 2025, downtime among its top 50 data providers fell by half.Plaid network data, September 2025Plaid API update, September 2024Plaid 2025 review

The panel selected Plaid for reach, documented movement toward direct APIs, and specific reliability work. The company reports these figures, and traffic committed to APIs includes migrations that were not yet complete.

Access

Connects more than 150 million consumers across more than 12,000 institutions.

Execution

Reported 750,000 new app connections each day and lower top-provider downtime.

User protection

Continues moving connections from credential-based access to direct APIs.