This is bad. Stripe doesn't have to provide the best service here. A lot of companies already use Stripe making the barrier to trying this out very low. Likewise for startups, if you're already trying out Stripe billing for your MVP you're more likely to use another Stripe product than to try out Plaid.
I'd agree. A startup looking to use Stripe Atlas now has access to this for standing up their services? Plaid is basically disqualified from the start, given how cohesive the Stripe platform is.
i think it actually does. Connectivity is important, and if connections break often, then fintech will look elsewhere. It's not a matter of which color is a button, users get pissed off and leave. So the connectivity better be good.
Competition is healthy. Whether it's good or bad, we'll see. No one can divine that, but I get the sense that Plaid's product team is a bit worried right now.
I think this is the biggest thing here. User credentials need to be protected and hopefully this type of open-market approach brings about more democratization of data.
One possible reason is that ACH payments are MUCH more user friendly if they can be initiated by an end-user authorizing their bank account (compared to digging up their account #, routing #, etc and entering the info manually).
ACH payments are essentially free to process (or a very small flat fee). This is very different from credit card transactions that charge a % of the entire transaction.
If ACH / direct payments from bank accounts became more common through services like Plaid and Stripe's new service, it could mean less fees (less revenue) for Stripe to collect. Which could explain why it's not something Stripe jumped into earlier.
TLDR: if I had to guess, there's more money in processing credit card payments, and much less money in facilitating ACH transactions.
