Plaid to Pay $58 Million to Users of Venmo, Robinhood, and More

Earlier this month, customers turned to Google to search out out whether or not emails informing them of a “Plaid settlement” had been official or spam. They are actual, and if you happen to acquired one, there’s an opportunity you may be owed some cash from the fintech firm’s current $58 million class motion settlement.

Plaid’s know-how permits customers to attach their financial institution accounts to roughly 5,000 completely different types of apps, from cell banking and financial savings apps to enterprise companies and cost apps. In truth, you may discover that considered one of your go-to apps makes use of Plaid to perform, like I did when writing this text. Popular apps that depend on Plaid embrace Venmo, Robinhood, American Express, Capital One, Wells Fargo, and Coinbase, amongst hundreds of others.

Last yr, Plaid settled a category motion lawsuit for $58 million introduced by customers who claimed that the corporate obtained their financial institution login data and gathered extra knowledge from them than was needed.

According to the complaint, plaintiffs mentioned that the corporate designed its Plaid Link interface to have the appear and feel and their financial institution accounts’ login screens, which led them to enter their usernames and passwords. The usernames and passwords had been then supplied to Plaid by way of the interface. In addition, plaintiffs argued that Plaid obtained extra monetary data and knowledge than was licensed or wanted by the app they had been utilizing.

Plaid has denied these allegations. Because it reached a settlement with the plaintiffs, the court docket has not dominated on whether or not the corporate is responsible of what it’s accused of.

“[N]o court or other entity has made any findings against Plaid nor any determination that the law has been violated,” reads a statement on the settlement’s informational web site.

So, how do you discover out whether or not you’re owed cash? If you used an app that relied on Plaid to hook up with your checking account from Jan. 1, 2013 to Nov. 19, 2021, there’s a great probability you’re entitled to a payout. (It must be famous that contemplating the variety of apps that use Plaid and the time interval lined within the criticism, it’s unlikely you’ll get some huge cash).

It’s fairly simple to search out out whether or not your app used Plaid. The lawsuit’s settlement web site permits you to search for affected apps and services. You may additionally have obtained a discover that you simply’re a part of the affected class by bodily mail or e mail. Once you could have that discovered, you need to submit a claim form earlier than April 28, 2022.

If I had been you, I might verify my spam folder to ensure the discover didn’t get despatched there by chance. I might additionally look to see if my most-used monetary apps present up on the settlement web site. You could not get some huge cash out of this, however hey, free cash is free cash.