How Plaid Works

Plaid is a financial software provider that makes it easy to securely link your bank account or credit card to other accounts, apps, or services. Plaid acts as a safe intermediary between your bank and any app or service to which you want to provide access to your bank or credit card information.

For example, if you want to link your checking account to a mobile payment app like Venmo or to a savings account at another institution, Plaid makes it possible to link those accounts seamlessly, without exposing your account information to either institution.   

Because Plaid connects your bank account to other financial apps or services, it must verify that you are the owner of the account before making that connection. Some personally identifying information is required to verify that you are authorized to request a connection from the bank account to another service. 
 
Plaid will take the account login information you provide and encrypt the financial data requested before supplying it to the application with a secure connection. To protect you, Plaid obscures your login information and only shares the information you choose.  

Forbright Bank may use Plaid to connect your Forbright Bank account with the external bank accounts you choose. That way, you can easily make deposits to or send transfers from your Growth Savings account or Certificate of Deposit (CD). Using Plaid allows you to securely connect your accounts while keeping all your external bank account information private. 

When Plaid connects your bank account to various apps or other accounts like your Growth Savings or CD, Plaid encrypts all your financial data with best-in-class encryption protocols. This allows you to securely transfer funds from one account to another without disclosing account information between institutions. 
 
Plaid also uses multi-factor authentication, helping to ensure that you are the only one who can authorize a transaction to or from one of your accounts.  

When you connect your bank account using Plaid, your regular account number may be converted to a Virtual Account Number (VAN) or Tokenized Account Number (TAN) for added security. Using a VAN or TAN protects your legitimate bank account number from being intercepted.  
 
It can be confusing if you see the last four digits of that VAN displayed instead of the last four digits of your actual bank account number. Just know that this means your account number is encrypted and the protected account token is shielding your actual account information. If you see the last four digits of the VAN instead of your account number, that doesn’t mean your account was incorrectly linked.