Visa and Mastercard Invest in Plaid's $250M Series C Round
Plaid, the fintech infrastructure platform providing APIs for bank account connectivity, disclosed that both Visa and Mastercard participated as strategic investors in its $250 million Series C funding round, which closed in December 2018 and valued the company at $2.65 billion. The investment was reported in September 2019 by Fortune, highlighting its strategic significance. Plaid's platform serves as a critical middleware layer in the fintech ecosystem, claiming that 80% of major fintech firms—including Venmo, Robinhood, Chime, and Betterment—rely on its APIs to link with customers' bank accounts.
The company states it serves one in four Americans with bank accounts. By co-investing, Visa and Mastercard positioned themselves to benefit from the continued growth of fintech companies that depend on Plaid's bank-connectivity infrastructure. The deal reflected broader momentum in fintech funding during 2019, with $10.5 billion deployed into the U.S. fintech sector in just the first eight months of the year.
The strategic nature of the investment underscored how incumbent payment networks were embedding themselves deeper into the fintech value chain.
- Major card networks deepening ties with fintech infrastructure signals strategic shift toward embedded finance partnerships
- Plaid's growing dominance as a bank-connectivity layer reinforces its position as critical BaaS-adjacent infrastructure for the entire fintech ecosystem