SAN FRANCISCO, February 14, 2023 — Plaid, the data network that powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life, and Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ: OKTA), the leading independent identity provider, today announced a partnership and integration to help thousands of banks and financial institutions adopt OAuth and APIs for exchanging data with third parties. The partnership provides the financial services ecosystem a more secure way to accelerate their open finance initiatives and deliver seamless connectivity for potentially millions of consumers.
Consumers are demanding connected experiences — 75% of U.S. consumers agree it’s important to be able to connect bank accounts with digital finance apps and services, according to a Plaid survey with Harris Poll in 2022. Enabling this connectivity means making data exchange as seamless and secure as possible, but many companies are not yet using the most innovative methods that enhance security for consumers.
Plaid and Okta are providing the integrations, education, and support to help all companies in the financial services industry transfer data through OAuth and API solutions. (OAuth is an industry-standard protocol for authorization that gives users more control over how their data is shared.) These methods do not require passwords to be exchanged between parties, reducing the reliance on credentials, and creating better and more secure experiences for consumers.
Customers can integrate Plaid with Okta Customer Identity Cloud (powered by Auth0) to streamline and secure authentication, authorization, and aggregation of shared-data — all with the consumer’s consent. Several organizations are now leveraging the integration, including Project Finance, which works with banks and credit unions to deliver personalized digital banking experiences to customers using a built-in suite of wellness tools, and Arc, which offers digital banking services for 1,000+ software startups.
“We are thrilled to provide to our startup clients this powerhouse innovation from Plaid and Okta, companies that have built a strong reputation for secure data connectivity and customer identity expertise,” said Raven Jiang, Co-founder and CTO at Arc. "Arc Treasury aims to provide our tech-forward customers with fast and secure data integrations for their banking needs. The new OAuth support from Plaid and Okta got us there in record time."
The partnership comes at a time when the financial services industry as a whole is moving quickly towards OAuth adoption — a requirement for all implementations supported by the industry consortium Financial Data Exchange (FDX) of which Plaid and Okta are members. This includes integrations facilitated by Core Exchange, the API data connectivity solution aligned to FDX specifications that Plaid launched in 2022, and first steps toward open banking announced at Okta’s Oktane22 conference.
“Plaid is committed to unlocking financial freedom for everyone,” said Aly Yarris, Financial Access Partnerships at Plaid. “We’re excited to partner with Okta to help financial services companies adopt OAuth integrations while advancing API-based data connectivity solutions that enable consumers to have greater transparency, security, and control over their own data. This is a win-win for consumers who expect privacy and choice in the ways they manage their financial accounts for things like payments, budgeting, and investing.”
“More than 17,000 organizations trust Okta to protect the identities of their customers and workforces,” said Maureen Little, Vice President of Technology Partnerships at Okta. “With Okta’s independent and neutral platform, financial services companies can embrace identity best practices regardless of their technology stack, and pass the security and experience benefits onto their consumers. We are thrilled to partner with Plaid to elevate the importance of identity across the financial services ecosystem."
For more information on the partnership use cases, visit the related blog. To find out how the integration works with your unique digital ecosystem, sign up here.
About Plaid
Plaid is a data network that powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. Plaid works with thousands of companies like Venmo, SoFi, and Betterment, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to more than 7,000 apps and services they want to use. Plaid's network covers more than 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey.
Follow Okta
