They provide mostly non-overlapping features. Stripe = get paid. Plaid = connector into banking data (transaction history on a checking account, or the account # itself, for example). So, if you need to accept payments, or send money, you'd lean towards Stripe. If you instead wanted to get access to a user's financial data, such as if you are writing a budgeting app or personal financial management application, you'd lean towards Plaid.
Interesting, I might have thought there would be some overlap because Plaid allows to initiate payments. Why wouldn’t it be possible to initiate a payment from a users personal account to my business account?
It's possible, but nobody does this because the friction to link an account with plaid is very high. You need to pick your bank then give your username and password to your bank (and potentially a 2fa code etc). All this just to get an ACH and routing number.
Plaid's true value add is normalized access to transactions and other banking metadata. Using it only for payments is not a good UX.
I work at Plaid and I agree that using Plaid just for getting an ACH and routing number leaves a lot of value on the table. You're getting more than an ACH number and and routing number though -- you're also getting proof that the person can log in to the bank account associated with that account/routing number combo, which is really helpful for fraud reduction -- fraud in online payments is a huge problem and part of the reason many of our customers use us. (You also get, if you want it, a token that you can use directly with Stripe, Dwolla, etc. to do the funds transfer.) Another popular use case is to use the Plaid Auth API for ACH and routing number, but then also use the Plaid Identity API (again, for fraud reduction) and/or the Balance API (to help make sure that the payment won't bounce).
"In the US, where there is no such requirement - the only way to access the bank account is to emulate a browser."
Not entirely correct. In the US, JPMorganChase, Intuit, and others have adopted the OFX standard (consortium-based, which provides #2) as a more secure, controlled API alternative to browser emulation.
like any other entrenched monopolist, Plaid shouldn't want OFX to make it easier for new entrants to enter. Building something to interact with OFX is easier than building a scraper.
In Europe regulation forced the hands of the banks to API-ify the data and make it accessible. In the US, as with many things, it is left to industry to sort out.
Plaid's implementation was aggressive (screen scraping, etc) but many banks are blocking that now and some, like JPMorgan Chase, have created APIs based on OFX (the industry consortium for secure data exchange) to allow controlled data access.
You, the customer, should always be able to choose which targets get to receive your data. Via OAuth mechanisms you grant them access without sharing your login/pw, and you can revoke at will.
When VOIP and other communication services started to sprout in the 1990s the FCC let them coast without taxation for about a decade. They then reclassified all such services as common carriers so that they could be taxed as such.
Common carriers must pay into various tax funds such as LNP (which funds citizens' rights to port their phone numbers between carriers), NANPA (which maintains the North American Numbering scheme), and USF (which subsidizes telephony buildout or services to areas that the private market would otherwise ignore). Most consumers see these as various charges as a roughly 20% up-charge on their bill.
You're referring to only one aspect of common carrier status. There's a whole host of regulations that apply - or not - if you're a common carrier.
And I'm sorry are you honestly claiming that those cost 20% of an internet bill? Because of so you're gonna have to cite a source for that one. Between your selective choice for what you claim is CC status, combined with a claim that a $50 monthly bill is $10 attributable to CC, makes me think you're pushing an agenda rather than sharing facts.
I should have been more clear: those taxes relate to communication services (VOIP) that interconnect with the public telecommunications network, e.g let you call phone numbers. They are not taxes for Internet access. And yes, there are a large number of other more restrictive regulations. Sources here: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-335228A1.p...
(warning - PDF)
The network effect is portable when the identities are preserved across products. For example, Facebook's separating out of FB Messenger was done while preserving the already built-up network effect.
I lived several hours downwind of these fires in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia at the time and remember well the sun being blotted out for weeks on end. You couldn't smell it in the air but the daytime sky was a deep toxic orange, and, it was eerily dim, just like during the moments of a partial solar eclipse. Then the oil slicks and dead jellyfish began covering the beaches and we were told to minimize our time outdoors (obviously). "Being outside is like smoking two packs a day," we were told. The scale of these fires is hard to fathom, but many hundreds of wells were lit. We heard stories of specialized Texan and Louisianan firefighters living through hell and high water putting them out. Bulldozers' steel frames were insufficient to withstand the searing heat when in close proximity to the blazing well heads, not to mention the enclosed cabins being impossible for a human to survive within. Among their methods were to rig controlled explosions to starve the fires of oxygen and to use large metal domes affixed to specialized hydraulic arms to lower them onto the well heads and smother the flames.
My favorite technique they used to extinguish the fires was to hoist a piece of well casing vertically over the flame, effectively raising it a few dozen feet into the air. Then they'd maneuver the bottom of the casing so the oil spraying from ground level wasn't near the flame, and the fire would be out.
Explosives have been one of the traditional ways to extinguish oilfield fires (in addition to techniques like directional drilling to relieve the pressure feeding the fire). My understanding is that in Kuwait there was actually a good supply of water from the Persian Gulf so most of the fires were extinguished with very large quantities of water, sometimes sprayed by gas turbines.
