Yesterday, Plaid announced Instant Payouts on Plaid Transfer, a real-time, multi-rail payout solution to send funds instantly, 24/7 via RTP or Same-Day ACH. This is Plaid’s first RTP product.
How it works: Plaid's Transfer product allows companies to authorize their customers, analyze risk, and move money with a single API. With Instant Payouts, Plaid now offers RTP in addition to ACH as possible processing rails. Plaid’s Instant Payouts solution provides intelligence on RTP eligibility, so if an account is not eligible, firms can seamlessly route the transaction to Same Day ACH without surfacing the complexity to their customer, the consumer.
Plaid's new head of payments, John Anderson, was recently on the Tearsheet Podcast to discuss another new product, Signal, which runs in the background of the firm's payments rails to increase success rates and weed out fraud.
Example of how it works: Gig-work platform MyBrandForce uses Instant Payouts to allow workers to get paid instantly at no charge whenever they need money. They can even complete a few jobs and get paid right away - putting money in their pockets for groceries, gas, or other expenses immediately.
Other use cases: Other example use cases include lenders using instant payouts for loans and insurance companies pushing instant disbursements for approved claims.
"Plaid is continuing its evolution from a company that facilitates moving DATA to one that facilitates moving data AND value (money)," wrote Jason Mikula on Linkedin. "By combining these capabilities, Plaid has a distinct advantage over other payment orchestration platforms that just facilitate money movement."