Stripe and Plaid suit up for battle

Seeing the company launching something new here and there, then, is nothing out of the ordinary.But in early May, when Stripe announced “Financial Connections,” a service that will, TechCrunch wrote, let its “customers connect directly to their customers’ bank accounts to access financial data to speed up or run certain kinds of transactions,” we took note.The product announcement put Stripe on a collision course with Plaid’s core business, even if it was fair play — the latter company had already told the market that payments were on its mind through the 2021 Flannel deal.Still, Plaid clearly took exception with what its leaders implied was a sneaky means of acquiring information and a lack of transparency on Stripe’s part in light of their partnership and history.With the two companies fussing at one another on Twitter, it was clear that the gloves, as much as they can be in the API world, were off.