Plaid Reportedly Near $13 Billion Valuation With New Funding

Plaid is reportedly near closing a new investment round that would value the FinTech startup at $13 billion, Bloomberg reported Friday (April 2), citing people familiar with the matter. The round, to be led by Altimeter Capital, “could raise hundreds of millions of dollars” for the firm, according to Bloomberg. Many existing investors are allegedly participating as well.

Plaid, which powers companies like Microsoft Corp. and Google, safely connects users’ banking data with financial apps like Venmo. The company recently told Bloomberg that it plans to expand its global reach, especially in Europe, where it aims to double the size of its London and Amsterdam offices.

“We are planning to aggressively scale the customers that we have and the volume of payments that we’re handling,” Keith Grose, head of the company’s U.K. business, told Bloomberg at the time.

London has the second largest financial services market in the world, the sort of environment that will push forward Plaid’s innovations, PYMNTS reported.

FinTechs have been hot this past year as the pandemic accelerated the digital shift. People who had primarily used physical banks have adopted digital banking practices almost overnight.

“What we’ve seen is almost five years of acceleration in five months,” said Innovate Finance CEO Charlotte Crosswell on a recent PYMNTS TV session that also hosted Grose. “You have whole groups of people getting into FinTech that you hadn’t seen before, and that’s led to really new use cases and new adoptions.”

The reported funding comes just months after Visa opted out of a $5.3 billion planned acquisition of the FinTech after the U.S. Department of Justice sued over antitrust concerns.

Representatives from both Plaid and Altimeter did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.