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.
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.