Plaid to Double Its Workforce in Europe Despite Scrapped Visa Deal

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by John K. Kumi · 3 min read
Plaid to Double Its Workforce in Europe Despite Scrapped Visa Deal
Photo: Plaid

Currently, Plaid has 40 employees in its London and Amsterdam offices with 10 more employees located internationally. 

In a bid to take advantage of the online banking boom caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Plaid Inc, a European start-up has disclosed to be on a mission to double its workforce in Europe. Currently, Plaid has 40 employees in its London and Amsterdam offices with 10 more employees located internationally.

According to Plaid, they seek to take their total employees based in Europe to 100. They are said to be operating in Ireland, Spain, the US, UK, Canada, France, and the Netherlands. According to Keith Grose, Plaid’s head of international, they are working to expand their operations to the other parts of Europe. 

Plaid was on the verge of being acquired by Visa Inc (NYSE: V), but the deal was scrapped over a US antitrust concern. The US Justice Department claimed that Plaid was working behind the scene to introduce a payment network to compete with Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc (NYSE: MA). However, Plaid denied this allegation. Before the Visa deal, plaid was said to have raised $309.3 million from investors including Visa. 

Plaid Profiting from the Fintech Market Boom in Europe and Globally

Zach Perret, the CEO and Co-founder of Plaid in an interview disclosed that Plaid, just like any other fintech startup is a different business. According to him, the fintech market has evolved over the last few months and appears to be different from how it used to be a year ago. 

Grose insisted that the fintech ecosystem has benefited a lot from the rise in demand of non-financial companies seeking to integrate financial services into their apps. Just recently, Plaid was engaged by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) to link users’ financial accounts to the Excel Spreadsheet software. 

Grose also disclosed that the demand from their clients to facilitate payments issued from a customer’s bank account rather than their credit cards has been on the rise. When Zach was asked whether Plaid will once again tap the private equity market for another fundraising, he said that they are always ready to do what is best for the long term growth of their company. For this reason, capital markets, fundraising, and all that is needed to achieve their goals would be looked at.

Despite the positive growth, and the long term outlook of the company expected to benefit some job seekers within the industry, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) has criticized Plaid for what he termed as “unfair competition”. Jamie Dimon likened them to people who improperly use data handed to them. In response, Perret said that consumer empowerment, security, and privacy have been the center of their activities. He added that they spend a lot of time with the JPMorgan team, and will always have time for their questions. 

The fintech industry is expected to continue its impressive growth in 2021 with online banking becoming a part and parcel of people globally. 

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