Banking Data APIs

Banking Data APIs

Banking data APIs provide developers and companies with tools to connect user bank accounts, verify identities, check balances, and streamline payments. This guide covers features, pricing, network reach, and performance metrics across three major platforms.

Network Reach and Institution Support

The platforms offer varying degrees of connectivity across financial institutions and geographic regions. Plaid connects 12,000 financial institutions across 20 countries [1]. Teller integrates across over 7,000 financial institutions [2]. Stripe Financial Connections supports a broad set of 5,000 financial institutions, alongside a hosted microdeposit flow fallback for other US institutions [3].

Core Features and Capabilities

Each platform provides tools for account connection, data retrieval, and payments. Plaid offers a financial data network and API keys to help companies build fintech solutions [1]. Teller provides real-time bank data, including checking balances, viewing transactions, verifying identity, and making payments via Zelle [2]. Stripe Financial Connections offers prebuilt authentication flows to securely share financial data for payments, fraud reduction, risk management, and new financial product development [3]. Specific shared capabilities across platforms include account balance checks and transaction history or management [2][3]. Stripe additionally supports ACH Direct Debit payments, bank account owner verification, and risk underwriting [3].

Performance and Conversion Metrics

Using these APIs impacts user onboarding and system volume. Plaid is used by 1 in 2 banked adults in the U.S. and handles over 1 million daily connections [1]. Companies building on Plaid experience 25 percent higher onboarding conversion [1]. Integrating Stripe Financial Connections helped increase conversion by 14% for businesses [3]. Teller allows users to connect bank accounts to applications in seconds [2], while Stripe allows users to connect financial accounts in seconds using prebuilt authentication flows [3].

Pricing and Tiers

Teller offers a free developer tier that includes 100 live connections [2]. Its paid production features charge $1.50 per verified account, $0.10 per balance API call, $0.30 per enrollment per month for transactions, and $1.75 per identity API call [2].

What is not covered

Specific technical documentation for Plaid's AuthGetRequest, detailed implementation steps for Stripe Identity, and specific pricing models for Plaid and Stripe are not covered.