Last month, Plaid, a technology platform that connects various applications with users’ bank accounts and has a growing presence in the mortgage space, raised $250 million in its Series C funding round that pegged the company with a reported valuation of $2.65 billion.
At the time, the company said that it planned to use the money to expand. And now, the company is using much of that money to do just that by acquiring one of its competitors.
Plaid announced last week that it acquired Quovo, a company that also connects applications to customers’ accounts, although Quovo’s business is focused more on investment and brokerage accounts.
In fact, Plaid founders Zach Perret and William Hockey called Quovo the “leading platform for investment and brokerage aggregation” when announcing the deal.
“We’re excited to announce that Plaid has acquired Quovo to make it easier for developers to build products that incorporate investment and brokerage data,” Perret and Hockey said last week in a blog post.
“Financial applications have historically used Plaid primarily to interact with checking and savings accounts. In acquiring Quovo, we are extending our capabilities to a wider class of assets,” they continued. “Our goal is to make money easier for everyone, and doing so requires that we consider consumers’ financial lives holistically. We’re excited to work with the Quovo team to enable this.”
Per Perret and Hockey’s post, Quovo’s customers include Betterment, Wealthfront and SoFi, along with Vanguard, Empower Retirement, and John Hancock.
According to CNBC, Plaid is reportedly paying around $200 million for Quovo.
The company has a growing presence in the mortgage space, as the company's head of mortgage Kate Adamson discussed with HousingWire’s Jacob Gaffney last year. Plaid’s asset verification program was also approved to be used within Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty program.
And now, the company will have even more financial data at its digital fingertips.
As for Quovo, the company said that it feels that joining forces with Plaid will help both companies moving forward.
“Plaid’s leadership in bank account connectivity will now be complemented by our leading investment, insurance, and loan account coverage. Combining our platforms will create a better experience for our customers while also enabling new services to be developed that consider the full financial picture of today’s consumer,” the company’s management said last week.
“When we started talking with Plaid about what the future might look like as a combined company, it quickly became clear that we’d be stronger together,” they continued. “We look forward to what the future holds for our combined platform. It is our sincere hope that it ushers in a new wave of innovation, from the smallest startups being founded today to disrupt the status quo, all the way to the largest banks in the world that are looking to supercharge their customer relationships with data.”
