Leading digital asset exchanges join the Plaid network

an article written by Ginger Baker, Head of financial access at Plaid

An increasing number of people – 16% of US adults – are using cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, through digital asset exchanges for investments, value exchange, asset tokenization, and more. With crypto becoming mainstream, Plaid has seen surging demand for crypto data portability, as people want to share their crypto data alongside traditional holdings as they plan their financial lives. 

To address this growing demand from consumers and our customers, leading exchanges and investment platforms supporting digital assets, including Binance.US, Gemini, Robinhood, and SoFi are now supported on the Plaid network. Support for additional platforms, including Blockchain.com and BitGo is planned for later this year.

Connecting crypto exchanges through the Plaid network helps bridge data portability gaps between Web3 and mainstream digital finance, and is another step toward a more open financial ecosystem. Many crypto investors acquire and hold their digital assets in accounts separate from their other investments.

Through Plaid, they can now securely share their crypto account information, such as asset types, balances and transactions, with other services they use to provide a more comprehensive picture for financial planning, tax advisory services, net worth calculations, and other potential use cases. 

Developers can incorporate this data through the Plaid Investments API, which now supports crypto accounts along with a broad range of investment account types—from brokerage and retirement accounts, to 529s and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

This network expansion is part of Plaid’s continued commitment to universal data access – to ensure consumers can easily and safely connect all account types to the apps and services they choose to manage their financial lives. Plaid provides the most comprehensive financial data network, connecting more than 12,000 financial institutions and many leading fintech apps and services across North America and Europe, allowing people to securely connect their financial information across the apps and services they choose for payments, investing, banking, lending and much more. 

Another way Plaid is bringing crypto closer to mainstream digital finance is by helping companies simplify their customer onboarding experience, including identity verification and compliance (KYC, AML) and bank-linked account funding. Many of the largest exchanges and Web3 companies use Plaid to quickly and safely verify users from around the world, and allow them to easily fund their accounts using ACH through Plaid and our network of payment partners. Plaid’s full-stack onboarding platform helps companies provide a better user experience across the entire onboarding process to improve success rates, lower costs and reduce risk and fraud along the way. 

As an API-first company, Plaid offers Data Connectivity Solutions to help enable these network connections, including Plaid Exchange and the recently announced Core Exchange, which aligns to the industry standard Financial Data Exchange (FDX) specification. We’re committed to ensuring that all types of accounts can connect to the apps people want to use and plan to support additional fintechs, digital asset exchanges and other Web3 platforms in 2022.