You would know if you're being asked for your banks username and password by a third party and can decide if you want to share that information; it's not something that you really need to know anything about ahead of time to be able to avoid.
The apps I know who use Plaid are Drop and Venmo. Some banks use it to instantly link external accounts without having to do trial deposits.
That's not entirely true. They try and imitate your bank's branding on the log in page and do not make any mention of Plaid. For example, when setting up Venmo, I thought I was logging into something my bank had created.
I mean, the only reason I even know what Plaid is is because the services I've used advertise they are using Plaid, for example, Drop: https://imgur.com/a/l4PM6QG I remember seeing it on Citibank too.
You're still sharing your bank account information with someone else. Even if it's your bank's API or whatever, "something my bank created" could be "something my bank had hired an external company to create," or even "a front end my bank created that uses third party software to do all the data processing on the back end." I'm not sure of a meaningful distinction between each case. If you want to minimize sharing bank account information "for privacy" then you don't give your bank account information to anyone.
> If you want to minimize sharing bank account information "for privacy" then you don't give your bank account information to anyone.
That's the whole point. You don't know you're giving your account information to anyone. I use Venmo and had no idea they relied on this technique until reading your comment.
I'm guessing those two companies probably use Plaid to instantly link external accounts without having to do trial deposits. Trial deposits can take several days. That's the use case that I used it for at Citibank anyways.
I never claimed my list was inclusive, only those are the ones I know use Plaid off the top of my head.
The apps I know who use Plaid are Drop and Venmo. Some banks use it to instantly link external accounts without having to do trial deposits.