Financial technology startup Plaid Inc. has raised a $425 million funding round at a valuation reported to be north of $13 billion.  

The investment, announced this morning, was led by Altimeter Capital. Silver Lake and Ribbit Capital joined as well along with a number of returning backers who contributed to Plaid’s previous funding rounds. 

Plaid’s reported $13.4 billion valuation, which makes it one of the most valuable privately held players in the fintech segment, is especially notable because it’s more than twice what the startup was worth just over a year ago. In January 2020, Visa Inc. inked an agreement to buy Plaid for $5.3 billion. The transaction was eventually scrapped after the U.S. Department of Justice asked a court to block it on antitrust grounds.

Plaid provides cloud software that makes it easier for developers to connect their applications to users’ bank accounts. According to the startup, its software can be implemented as little as two weeks. Though it focuses on a relatively narrow niche, Plaid has a large addressable market because the ability to connect to bank accounts is an essential feature for numerous types of digital services, in the consumer market as well as the enterprise. 

Financial planning tools, for example, rely on Plaid to pull information on users’ spending habits from their bank accounts and provide savings recommendations. Corporate accounting systems can harness the startup’s software to keep track of a company’s business transactions. Plaid’s technology also helps power a wide range of other services in areas such as lending, wealth management and payment processing, among others.

Because its bank account integration software is at the foundation of many other fintech services, Plaid has found itself in a strong position to benefit from the strong market-level growth the fintech segment is seeing. 

The startup shared an overview of its market reach when its since-scrapped acquisition by Visa was announced early last year. At the time, Plaid said that one in four people with a U.S. bank account had used its technology at one point or another.

That number has only grown since. Plaid disclosed to TechCrunch on occasion of its funding news today that its customer count has increased 60% in 2020 and its headcount by 20% during the first quarter of 2021. Chief Executive Officer Zachary Perret also said that Plaid will eventually seek to go public.

In a post on Plaid’s blog, the executive shared a few details about the company’s growth roadmap. “Plaid is focused on creating a single, integrated platform focused on helping innovators build digital financial products,” Perret wrote. “Doing so requires scaling to meet the increased use of fintech, expanding globally to meet international demand, and delivering an expanded set of platform products to our customers.”

Elaborating on Plaid’s product strategy, Perret detailed that the plan includes “continued investment in APIs that help people connect a complete view of their finances, as well as tools and services to support enhanced privacy, personalization, decisioning, and automation.”

Image: Plaid