Plaid Is Looking To Hire In Europe
Plaid, the FinTech platform provider that recently raised $250 million in venture funding, is gearing up to expand into Europe.
According to a report in Financial News, based on open positions at Plaid, the company is looking to hire 10 or more people for jobs in Europe. The jobs include a Europe lead and a U.K. lead specializing in go-to-market strategy. The U.K. lead Plaid will be in charge of building a presence for Plaid in London, and will be in contact with lawmakers in the country. Other jobs include engineers and policy experts.
“Our plan has always been to bring the financial connectivity Plaid offers to a global stage, but we have no specific expansion plans to announce at this time,” a Plaid spokesperson told the publication.
Plaid‘s platform enables developers to create financial services applications, with most of its customers using it to create checking and savings account features. The company is branching out into new markets and recently acquired Quovo, which created a platform for investment and brokerage aggregation that is used by many big players in wealth management. Customers of Quovo include FinTechs such as Betterment, Wealthfront and SoFi, along with traditional wealth management companies including Stifel, Vanguard, Empower Retirement and John Hancock.
As of the end of 2018, Plaid had a valuation of $2.65 billion after raising $250 million in a venture capital round of funding. As of late December, it had raised $310 million with the $2.65 billion valuation. This Series C round was led by venture capitalist Mary Meeker, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures and Plaid’s previous investors Goldman Sachs, NEA and Spark Capital. Partner Mark Goldberg, who led the round from Index Ventures, told Karen Webster shortly after the news was announced that he believes “we’re still only seeing the early phases of Plaid’s growth, because however the financial services market grows going forward, as long as it grows, Plaid will have work to do.”