American Express and Plaid have established cooperation in order to optimize and simplify the process of using fintech applications.

Last Thursday, June 8, these companies entered into data exchange agreements with the permission of customers. The relevant information is contained in the joint press release of the firms.

This agreement will become effective before the end of this year. As part of the partnership program, American Express customers will be able to connect to any of more than 8000 applications and services running on the Plaid platform. An important advantage is that consumers will not be required to hand over their passwords to a third party.

Danielle Cloud, senior vice president of corporate data management and platforms at American Express, says that the agreement is a reflection of the company’s desire to provide customers with the security, control, and transparency they need while exchanging their account data with financial applications.

The press release states that integration based on the Application programming interface (API) will allow consumers to exchange financial information and not provide data to a third party.

Mechanisms for improving the process of using new FinTech applications, the implementation of which is provided for by the partnership program, include greater control over the exchange of financial data, the ability to exchange information in real-time, detailed transparency of data transmission, and simplification of registration.

Christie Sunquist, head of the department of partnership with US financial institutions at Plaid, says that the mission of this firm is to ensure that all consumers have safe and reliable access to their data. She also noted that American Express plays a fundamental role in the financial life of many people.

The news about this cooperation appeared on the same day when it became known that consumers had the opportunity to confirm their identity in all applications and services based on Plaid. The open banking platform has updated its identity identification tool. This was done so that previously verified users could subscribe to additional applications for digital finance without re-verifying their identity.

Plaid reports that according to the results of testing the updated tool, 70% of clients registered in the service and saw that the time needed to complete the adaptation was halved.

The results of intra-industry research indicate that in the United States, 69% of financial services consumers believe that the speed and ease of interaction with customers when registering for specialized products are important.