Financial services giant Plaid makes first foray into crypto

Founded in 2012, Plaid has established itself as a preeminent fintech firm, with over $730 million in funding, including a $425 million Series D round in 2021 at a $13.4 billion valuation. The company helps link bank accounts to fintech apps and provides identity verification services.

While Plaid has worked with crypto companies to integrate its offerings, Wallet Onboard represents the company’s first foray into building a Web3-first product.

Clay Allsopp, an engineering manager at Plaid working on its Web3 tools, said consumers want the hundreds of available wallets to be able to interact with dapps, and instead of integrating them one at a time, Wallet Onboard simplifies that.

“Plaid is the one integration you can drop in, and we take care of all of those problems,” Allsopp said. 

Through the tool, customers can connect wallets, from Coinbase to Rainbow, to apps as part of the onboarding process through a Plaid-branded interface.

Courtesy of Plaid

While the main advantage is ease-of-use for both developers and consumers, Alain Meier, the head of identity at Plaid, added that Wallet Onboard also adds trust to the crypto ecosystem. The industry has a reputation for scams and hacks—2022 is on pace to become the worst year on record, with $718 million stolen from decentralized finance protocols in October alone.

“From a consumer perspective, there are very few trusted names in crypto right now,” said Meier. “Being able to be that familiar face for consumers when they’re going into that world of Web3 is our goal here.” 

While Wallet Onboard won’t solve the spate of exploits besieging crypto platforms, Meier said that it can at least add more security, especially because each new onboarded wallet will go through Plaid’s compliance review.

The launch of Wallet Onboard comes on the heels of the release of two new identity verification features last week: autofill and behavior analytics.

With autofill, consumers can verify identity through Plaid-supported products through just phone number and date of birth. With behavior analytics, Plaid can monitor data entry behavior—such as how long it takes for someone to enter their social security number—to identify potential fraudsters. The startup investing platform Republic, which works with crypto products, is using the latter tool.  

“We’re trying to build that trust and safety for crypto at the moment,” Meier said. “We think that’s just severely lacking because of the last few boom-and-bust cycles.”