Fintech Plaid has raised additional Series D funding in a round led by J.P. Morgan Private Capital Growth Equity Partners and existing investor Amex Ventures, according to a Tuesday announcement from Plaid Co-Founder and CEO Zach Perret.
The latest funding round builds on Plaid’s April $425 million, intended to help grow its platform and “enable the next generation of digital financial services.” That same round upped the company’s valuation to a hefty $13.5 billion led by Altimeter Capital, Silver Lake and Ribbit Capital alongside existing investors.
To date, the company has raised $734.3 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
“These are storied companies intrinsic to the fabric of financial services and are important partners,” said Perret. “Both J.P. Morgan’s Growth Equity Partners and American Express will be critical in our effort to enable great financial outcomes for consumers and drive innovation in the industry.”
San Francisco-based Plaid powers fintech apps from the likes of Robinhood, Square and Venmo. Now, the company stands as one of the early participants of J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s private capital arm. The financial giant launched the expansion in early June to focus on “institutional and high-net-worth” clients with the ability to also invest the firm’s capital.
“When we first invested in Plaid’s Series B, it was clear they were the financial data partner of choice for developers,” Amex Ventures Managing Director Lindsay Fitzgerald said in a statement emailed to FinLedger.
“Since then, Plaid has become essential fintech infrastructure, propelling a new generation of applications to market faster,” Fitzgerald added.
And Plaid has done a bang up job of funding its market goals.
In March, we reported that Plaid had announced the release of Income, a beta product looking to simplify income verification so customers can secure loans, qualify for mortgages, rent apartments, lease vehicles and more. The company said Income can also be used by mortgage lenders to capture and “digest” a person’s income data directly from their payroll provider to make more informed decisions about their creditworthiness.
Meanwhile, in January we reported that the fintech had launched a nine-month incubator for early-stage startup fintech founders who are Black, Indigenous or people of color called FinRise.
More recently, the company settled a $58 million class action lawsuit over claims that the fintech firm passed on personal banking data to third party firms without user consent.
The settlement encompasses five separate lawsuits combined as one. Each claims that Plaid used consumers’ banking login credentials to gather and distribute detailed financial data without prior consent; however, these are currently just allegations.