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Underscoring the rising profile of open banking in consumers’ financial lives, Green Dot Corp. early Tuesday said it has completed an integration for its GO2bank mobile banking app with the Plaid Exchange network from Plaid Inc. The move will connect users of Green Dot’s app, launched only in January last year, to more than 6,000 other apps and services, the companies said.
“Our partnership with Green Dot helps GO2bank customers securely connect their accounts to the apps and services they choose,” says Ginger Baker, head of financial access for San Francisco-based Plaid, in a statement.
The link through Plaid will leverage Plaid Exchange, an open application programming interface that speeds data connections on behalf of financial-services customers. Open banking providers connect payments and other financial-services firms to the accounts held by individuals at banks and non-bank financial firms to verify account ownership and funds balances and to facilitate money movement.
GO2bank is aimed primarily at gig workers, lower-income consumers, and small-business owners, Green Dot says. The app’s features include a facility to obtain access to wages up to two days early and the ability to deposit cash at more than 90,000 retail stores. It also offers a credit and debit card, rewards, overdraft protection, bill pay, ATM access, and a savings feature. When the app launched, Green Dot chief executive Dan Henry said the company was “asking customers to commit to Go2bank and their primary bank account.” At the time of the launch, Green Dot waived account fees for customers who signed up for direct deposit.
Plaid is a leading provider of open banking at a time when the service has taken on increasing importance in payments and other financial services. Open banking can be particularly useful for payments firms looking to facilitate money movement outside of established networks like Visa or Mastercard. For this reason, both Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. have moved to acquire open-banking platforms. Visa recently closed on its $2.15-billion acquisition of Stockholm-based Tink AB, while Mastercard earlier shelled out $825 million to buy Finicity Corp.
Visa withdrew a bid in 2020 to acquire Plaid for $5.3 billion after the Department of Justice raised antitrust concerns.
Long headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., Green Dot in May last year announced it was moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas. The company maintains offices in Pasadena as well as in Florida and Ohio.
