Plaid is a great idea, but the implementation worries me. My understanding is that, for most banks, you give Plaid your username and password, and Plaid scrapers on their servers log into your online banking account. Even worse, Plaid obfuscates this behavior from users by replicating their banks login window and making it appear that you are logging directly into your bank.
I'm not sure how to feel about this, because I understand that banks' lack of open API access is the central problem. But it seems irresponsible to present Plaid as a secure solution, when its login system is technically a phishing page.
I think a much cooler, probably safer, solution would be a mobile SDK that runs the scrapers directly from the user's phone, instead of on Plaid's servers.
I'm not sure how to feel about this, because I understand that banks' lack of open API access is the central problem. But it seems irresponsible to present Plaid as a secure solution, when its login system is technically a phishing page.
I think a much cooler, probably safer, solution would be a mobile SDK that runs the scrapers directly from the user's phone, instead of on Plaid's servers.