Plaid Exchange allows banks and financial institutions to build their own APIs to connect with customers.

Plaid is the fintech famous for its API that connects customers and their apps with their bank accounts. It is also the fintech for which Visa (NYSE: V) paid an acquisition price of $5.3 billion. The company announced Tuesday in a blog post that it was upgrading its Plaid Exchange service, which debuted in May. Banks and financial institutions, as well as their fintech partners, which use the service, can now provide real-time updates to their customers. (Finovate)

Better cash management

Instant account updates would enable customers to manage their cash better. Besides, they would also be able to more efficiently budget for their incomes and expenses.

“It allows institutions on Plaid Exchange to send user-permissioned transactions data to authorized Plaid developers within seconds of a user’s activity,” said the company’s product manager Jesse Dhillon in a blog. “This allows users to have a consistent, up-to-date picture of their finances when they use apps powered by the company.”

In today’s times of low employment and docked pays, people are managing their finances from paycheck to paycheck, and an error can cause a serious dislocation of their financial plans. This applies especially to hourly workers.

Dhillon cites the instance of Branch, a banking client. “Instant, real-time data has become standard for consumers today and it’s a critical piece of information that our users need to make sound financial decisions,” said Branch CEO Atif Siddiqi. “Plaid provides our users with the most current picture of their transaction history, empowering their daily financial decisions.”

Visa

Visa acquired Plaid for $5.3 billion in January.

Last week, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) gave its approval for Visa’s acquisition.

Meanwhile, irate users filed two separate class-action suits in June and July on alleged grounds that Plaid violated their data privacy and collected their information illegally.

Related Story:    Irate Users Haul Plaid To Court on Alleged Privacy Violations