Plaids terms are really concerning to me as a user and I’m not willing to give them my bank credentials. My main fear is that they get hacked and my credentials are used to drain my accounts. Plaid waives any liability and my bank doesn’t do much if my credentials are used to do stuff like initiate wire transfers.
Venmo is doing this weird thing where for some transactions they are saying they require plaid to get my bank credentials to log in and “verify.” Of course that breaks my first issue. But it also allows them to suck up and use all of my bank transactions forever.
Seems like a shitty tradeoff just to Venmo money to people.
I would recommend considering a bank that supports Zelle payments. Cut out the middleman (PayPal/Venmo). Fed Instant Payments are around the corner (2023), at which point instant payments should be available ubiquitously.
My bank supports Zelle and I use it with the few contacts willing to accept Zelle. But most friends don’t, nor do random people who need money. I was trying to buy a book off a street vendor and he took cash app and some app I had never heard of and Venmo, but no Zelle.
This recently happened to me as well - Venmo tried to invalidate my payment method and pushed me to go through their "instant verification" process. Note that "manual verification" (i.e. the deposit method) is still an option on their app, though you may have to remove your current bank credentials and re-add it.
Venmo is doing this weird thing where for some transactions they are saying they require plaid to get my bank credentials to log in and “verify.” Of course that breaks my first issue. But it also allows them to suck up and use all of my bank transactions forever.
Seems like a shitty tradeoff just to Venmo money to people.