Plaid Launches New Tool To Streamline Income Verification

FinTech startup Plaid is introducing Plaid Income, a product intended to streamline the income verification process, making it easier for consumers to get loans, rent apartments and more, according to a company blog post.

The company noted that income and employment verification is critical to processing loan applications, but it is generally a cumbersome, time-consuming process. The new Plaid Income product offers a single streamlined solution for income verification that aims to alleviate friction for lenders and applicants.

The new tool expands consumer-permissioned data access to include payroll information, giving users more control to digitally verify income and employment directly from their payroll provider. Plaid Income aims to help financial institutions (FIs) make better decisions using permissioned income, tax and employment data. 

“At Carputty, a key to providing a faster, easier and more transparent car financing experience is being able to verify the applicant’s financial information quickly. Plaid Income allows customers to easily and securely share their information digitally, eliminating what is often a major source of friction and stress in the traditional car-buying process,” according to Joshua Tatum, co-founder and chief product officer (CPO), Carputty. 

Sahil Vakil, founder of MYRA, is another Plaid user. “At MYRA, we empower an underserved segment — immigrants — to navigate their U.S. finances,” said Vakil in a statement. “Plaid plays an important role in MYRA’s ability to provide a diverse, equitable and inclusive financial ecosystem for internationals.”

The new Plaid Income solution is currently in beta mode, and there is a waiting list to join. 

“ADP and Plaid are actively working toward a partnership around consumer-permissioned payroll data that will enable consumers’ credential-less access to their payroll details using ADP’s API,” said Meraj Mohammad, vice president, ADP Ventures.

Plaid offers real-time payroll authentication for more than 250,000 of the country’s biggest employers, as well as 80 percent of Fortune 100 firms. It includes permissioned data from people in all types of employment — full-time, part-time, freelancers and gig economy workers.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Jamal Ayyad, head of product at SurePayroll, said more organizations are digitizing payroll operations, and that payroll data is becoming an increasingly valuable asset for CFOs.

Plaid said in January that it was exploring doubling its size in Europe. The Silicon Valley startup is planning to increase the number of employees in London and Amsterdam to 80, up from 40 to 50 staff members.