Buddy Integrates Plaid’s Open Finance Services Into Personal Finance App

Buddy has partnered with Plaid to help members of Generation Z manage their finances.

By integrating with Plaid’s open finance services, Buddy’s budgeting app for Gen Z can allow users to securely connect their financial accounts and track their spending, Buddy said in a Tuesday (April 25) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

“By teaming up with Plaid, we are making this process quicker and more painless than ever before, helping millions across the world budget and plan for the future they want and deserve,” Buddy founder and CEO Olle Lind said in the release.

Buddy’s personal finance app enables users to make more informed financial decisions by tracking their spending, understanding their habits and increasing their financial visibility, according to the press release.

With the integration of Plaid’s open finance application programming interfaces (APIs), users of Buddy’s app can get a more comprehensive and personalized view of their finances. They can also choose to automate their savings, the release said.

“By using apps like Buddy, younger generations can gain better control over their finances and make more informed decisions, helping them to develop healthy financial habits that will serve them well in the future,” Lind said in the release.

As PYMNTS reported in March, budget-focused FinTechs and innovative financial institutions may have a golden opportunity to meet consumers’ needs.

For example, like Buddy, some FinTechs are already offering a variety of digital financial wellness tools aimed at assisting customers with a better view of their transactional habits. These include the ability to view current spending habit snapshots, tag purchases to categorize into budget lines and explore historical spending data and trends.

There is an urgent need for financial literacy tools as only 4% of Americans are able to demonstrate financial literacy.

There’s also an opportunity for banks and credit unions to increase their customer loyalty by offering budgeting tools and financial guidance, according to “Credit Union Innovation: The Race to Meet Consumer Demand,” a PYMNTS and PSCU collaboration.

The report also found that technology is playing an increasingly large role in promoting financial inclusion among bank customers in the U.S.