TECH: Plaid must pay users of Venmo, Robinhood and other apps $58 million

Even if you’ve nev­er heard of a com­pa­ny called Plaid, it may owe you part of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar set­tle­ment, Fast Com­pa­ny report­ed. Plaid, which con­nects con­sumer bank accounts to ser­vices like Ven­mo, Robin­hood, Coin­base and oth­er apps, has been accused of col­lect­ing exces­sive finan­cial data from con­sumers. While deny­ing any wrong­do­ing, it agreed to pay out $58 mil­lion to all con­sumers with a bank account linked to one of its rough­ly 5,000 client apps.

The law­suit accused Plaid of col­lect­ing “more finan­cial data than nec­es­sary from users.” He also claimed that the com­pa­ny obtained users’ bank login details through its own “Plaid Link” inter­face, “which had the look and feel of the user’s bank account login screen”, accord­ing to the set­tle­ment web­site. In addi­tion to the $58 mil­lion pay­out, the com­pa­ny was forced to change some of its busi­ness practices.

Mil­lions of peo­ple use Plaid-relat­ed apps, so any pay­out can be pret­ty slim. How­ev­er, if you are a US res­i­dent who had a bank account con­nect­ed to the app between Jan­u­ary 1, 2013 and Novem­ber 19, 2021, you may be eli­gi­ble to receive a claim. For more infor­ma­tion, see the FAQ on the set­tle­ment site.

You may have already received an email about the law­suit, or you can check the search sec­tion of the set­tle­ment to see if you used an eli­gi­ble app. In any case, you have until April 28, 2022 to sub­mit your claim.