Financial services company Wells Fargo has signed a data exchange agreement with Plaid, which provides access to financial data network, in a bid to improve transparency and convenience for its customers.
The alliance will allow Wells Fargo customers to securely share their financial data with the digital financial tools and services that are supported by Plaid via an application-programming interface (API).
Certain Wells Fargo customers use Plaid to access their financial data in order to use financial apps.
As part of the latest partnership, Wells Fargo intends to provide its customers with better control on the bank account details shared with apps supported by Plaid.
Customers will be able to turn on/off data sharing using Wells Fargo’s Control Tower in the company’s mobile banking app and online banking.
Control Tower is designed to offer a single view of digital financial footprint in Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo Virtual Channels digital payments head Ben Soccorsy said: “We want to be where our customers are, and if customers want to share their Wells Fargo account information with a Plaid-supported app to help them better manage their finances, we want to enable them to do so seamlessly and more securely.
“Our agreement with Plaid, a leading data platform for many financial management apps, will help our customers share their financial data with these apps with greater control and transparency.”
Wells Fargo intends to introduce the data sharing experience for some Plaid customers within a year.
Plaid business development and strategy head Sima Gandhi said: “It is critical that consumers have more secure and seamless access to their own financial data to power their modern financial lives and our collaboration with Wells Fargo will ensure that our mutual customers can enjoy the best of fintech innovation for years to come.”
The API to be used under the collaboration will leverage a secure, tokenised ‘handshake’ between the companies’ servers which will facilitate the sharing of customers’ financial data.
Plaid will access Wells Fargo’s data exchange API on the bank’s Gateway Channel, which is used by commercial and corporate banking customers to incorporate Wells Fargo products, services and information into their own digital settings.
