American Express and Plaid Streamline Onboarding for FinTech Apps

American Express and Plaid have partnered to make it easier for customers to use FinTech apps.

With their new customer-permissioned data sharing agreement, which is to launch this year, American Express customers will be able to connect to any of more than 8,000 apps and services powered by Plaid without having to share their American Express password with a third party, the companies said in a Thursday (June 8) press release.

“This agreement reflects American Express’ commitment to providing our customers with the security, control and transparency they want when sharing their account data with financial apps of their choosing,” Danielle Cloud, senior vice president, enterprise data governance and platforms at American Express, said in the release.

The application programming interface (API)-based integration will allow American Express customers to share their financial data without having to share their user credentials, according to the press release.

The customer experience when signing up for new FinTech apps will include greater control over the sharing of their financial information, the ability to share the information in real time, better visibility into what data is being shared and where it’s going, and easier sign-ons, the release said.

“At Plaid, our mission is to help all consumers benefit from safe and reliable access to their data,” Christy Sunquist, head of U.S. financial institution partnerships at Plaid, said in the release. “We’re thrilled to partner with American Express, a storied brand fundamental to the financial lives of so many, to facilitate secure connectivity for their account holders to thousands of apps in our network.”

The announcement of this partnership comes on the same day that Plaid announced that it now enables consumers to verify their identity across all Plaid-powered apps and services.

The open banking platform has modified its Identity Verification product so that previously verified users can sign up for additional digital finance apps without having to repeat the entire identity verification process.

Plaid reports that in early testing, 70% of users have opted in to the service and seen the time it takes to complete onboarding reduced by half.

That’s important for companies that offer FinTech apps, as 69% of consumers believe the speed and ease of their customer experience during sign-up for financial products is somewhat or very important, according to “Advanced Identity Verification Accelerates Digital Onboarding,” the February edition of the “Digital Identity Tracker®,” a PYMNTS and Prove collaboration.