Jacob Siegal
·3 min read
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Within the past several weeks, you might have received an email informing you that a company called Plaid owes you money. In fact, so many people received this notice that there’s an entire Snopes page dedicated to it. As it turns out, the Plaid class action settlement is real, and there’s a good chance that it affects you. Thousands of popular apps use Plaid to connect to your bank account. Some you might have on your phone include Acorns, Coinbase, Credit Karma, SoFi, and Venmo.
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Plaid settlement: You might be owed money
In 2021, Plaid settled a class-action lawsuit for $58 million. The payouts will likely be rather modest. Plaid noted in a blog post that “hundreds of millions of people across North America and Europe have used Plaid” to connect their accounts to the apps they use.
You can read more on the dedicated page for the settlement. As that page explains, the class-action suit alleges that Plaid obtains much more financial data than the apps that support it actually requires. Additionally, users claim that the user interface — Plaid Link — looks like a bank account login screen. But users were in fact providing their login details directly to Plaid.
Plaid denies the allegations in the lawsuit, and the FAQ clarifies that no court has made any findings against Plaid. And yet, Plaid did agree to “minimize the data it stores going forward, to delete certain previously retrieved data, and to improve and maintain certain already-implemented enhancements to Plaid Link.” Members of the lawsuit will also be able to “view and manage the connections they’ve made between their financial accounts and chosen applications using Plaid, and delete data stored in Plaid’s systems by creating a Plaid Portal account, at my.plaid.com.”
How to get your money from Plaid
The court will decide whether or not to approve the settlement on May 12th, 2022. If you used an app that supports Plaid and you want to receive compensation, you’ll need to submit a claim by April 28th, 2022. If you never received an email (or accidentally deleted it), but think you may still be eligible, visit this page on the settlement website. Hit the “Click Here” button and fill out the form. You can list up to eight apps or services that you think might qualify you.
As the website explains, you are a member of the class action lawsuit if you live in the US and connected a financial account to an app that uses Plaid between January 1st, 2013, and November 19th, 2021.
According to Plaid’s website, over 5,500 digital financial services are built on Plaid. Here is a small selection of the apps that use the company’s technology:
American Express, Avant, Betterment, Capital One, Chime, Citi, Expensify, NerdWallet, Regions Bank, Robinhood, Stripe, TD Ameritrade, Truebill, Wells Fargo, Wise
If you’ve ever connected your bank account to an app, chances are good that it uses Plaid. That said, if you aren’t sure, the settlement website features a searchable list of apps. Just start typing and all of the affected apps will show up.
