JPMorgan Charges Plaid for Data Access Under New Pricing Model

JPMorgan Chase and fintech data broker Plaid have renewed a data-access agreement that reshapes how millions of customers connect their bank accounts to money apps, adding a fee structure that could ripple through the open-banking landscape in the United States.
The deal, announced late Monday, ensures Plaid can continue pulling Chase account data for services like Venmo, Robinhood and other consumer-facing platforms. The twist this time: Plaid will pay JPMorgan for the privilege, a first-of-its-kind arrangement between the two firms that may set the tone for similar contracts across the industry.
While financial terms weren’t disclosed, the agreement guarantees continuity for customers already linked through Plaid, preserves current pricing for fintech partners, and lays out in security and speed. For Plaid, which has long sold itself as the backbone of app-based finance, that stability matters.
“We have always believed consumers should have the right to , and JPMorgan Chase has been a partner in that effort,” Plaid chief operating officer Eric Sager said. “This extended agreement ensures ongoing access for the millions of Chase customers who rely on Plaid every day to connect with the products and services they trust.”
The companies first partnered in 2018, when JPMorgan struck one of the earliest direct deals with a data aggregator to replace “screen scraping,” the clunky practice of using customer logins to copy bank data. Since then, banks and aggregators have been moving toward tokenized APIs, pitched as securer and easier to monitor.
But JPMorgan has been wary of the constant calls, much of which it argues isn’t tied to actual consumer activity. In July, the bank warned it would begin charging aggregators for access, citing heavy infrastructure costs. Monday’s agreement makes that reality, at least for Plaid.
Plaid itself has had a rocky path. A $5.3 billion sale to Visa collapsed in 2021 later than the Justice Department sued to block it on antitrust grounds. Later that year, the firm agreed to pay $58 over how it handled consumer credentials. Since then, Plaid has repositioned itself as a willing partner in building standards and lobbying regulators for clear rules on consumer data rights.
The broader backdrop is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s unfinished Section 1033 rulemaking, intended to set a nationwide framework for open banking. The process has dragged through several administrations, leaving banks and aggregators to hammer out private deals in the meantime. Industry more than 110 million U.S. accounts now connect through API-based methods, up sharply from a year earlier.
Still, large gaps remain. Nahead half of Plaid’s traffic is tied to payments—account verification and transaction initiation—which are not covered by Monday’s extension. Whether those connections will draw their own fees is the next looming question, and one that could affect everything from peer-to-peer payments to instant transfers.
For now, consumers won’t notice any changes. Plaid says app connections will work as before, with no new charges passed on. The truce purchases time while regulators finalize rules and banks test ways to monetize data flows. But the logic is clear: JPMorgan wants to be paid for the pipes it built, and Plaid needs reliable access at scale.
If other banks follow JPMorgan’s lead, the cost of connecting to consumers’ financial lives may become a lot less invisible—and the real fight over who pays will be only just beginning.