Plaid’s Zach Perret: ‘Every company is a fintech company’

The fintech revolution is just getting started.

At least that’s the impression we got after a conversation with Plaid co-founder Zach Perret. He appeared on Extra Crunch Live last week to talk about his company’s announced exit to Visa and the larger fintech landscape.

Perret and Plaid announced a deal to sell the company to Visa earlier this year for $5.3 billion, a transaction that highlighted the company’s central position in the fintech world. Plaid provides APIs that link consumer bank accounts to apps and other financial services, making it the connective tissue of the fintech boom.

It’s probably no surprise, then, that Perret is bullish: “You’ve heard it a million times, but the quote of software eating the world [is true], and my corollary to that is [that] every company is a fintech company. And certainly every financial services company should be a fintech company.”

He said there’s lots of room left for fintech and finservices companies to create new products, which is not a bad view of the future if you want to be cheered up. Perret also noted that there are widespread opportunities for fintech companies to help underbanked people in the U.S. and abroad, which indicates a massive, untapped total addressable market.

To make sure you can take your own notes, we’ve included the full session below and excerpted a few passages from the transcript. (You can sign up for Extra Crunch here if you need access.)

Zach Perret

First up, here’s the full call:

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