TD Bank files lawsuit against Plaid for “duping” its customers
The US subsidiary of TD Bank has filed a lawsuit against unicorn fintech Plaid accusing it of using the bank’s logo to convince users to hand over their data.
Plaid is in hot water with TD Bank
Filings issued through a court in new Jersey show TD Bank claiming Plaid created a user interface that infringes on its trademarks, logos, and colours.
TD Bank says the Visa-acquired fintech firm is duping customers into entering personal information by aping the bank’s brand.
TD Bank indicates in its court filings that it had attempted to work things out with Plaid privately.
“After repeated attempts to work through these issues with Plaid, TD is taking legal action to protect our customers and our brand,” says Greg Braca, president and chief executive of TD Bank’s US subsidiary.
“Plaid’s intentional, unauthorized use of TD’s name, trademarks and logos is deceptive.
“By mimicking TD’s login screen, Plaid creates the false impression that consumers are engaging directly with TD Bank […] when that is not the case.”
TD Bank is asking the court to order Plaid to cease “unauthorised” use of TD’s name, trademarks and logos.
Plaid’s data deals
Plaid offers systems and solutions to enable open banking between financial institutions and third-party developers.
It provides APIs to initiate payments between bank accounts and third parties like Venmo, Square Cash, and Robinhood.
Visa agreed to buy the firm in a $5.3 billion deal announced in January. The figure is roughly double Plaid’s private valuation of $2.65 billion.
Plaid holds direct data sharing agreements with major US banks including Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase.
It signed its deal with Wells Fargo after initially using screen-scraping techniques to gain data about the bank’s customers. Wells set up an API service in 2016 as part of a programme to discourage the practice.
