Capital One's dispute with Plaid raised questions about the ability of banks and aggregators to work together. But the end of that fight, and Capital One's deal with Finicity, show common ground can be reached — eventually.
The Stamford, Conn., issuer of store credit cards has two potential options after the retail giant chose to partner with Capital One. But the decision over which path to take is out of its hands.
Synchrony Financial said its credit-card deal with Walmart won't be renewed and will expire next year. The largest issuer of store cards said Thursday that it's evaluating whether to sell the $10 billion in balances or retain the portfolio and convert qualifying customers to general purpose credit cards.
Credit card and auto loans grew again in the second quarter at the McLean, Va., company, and the net charge-off rates of both business lines fell, too.
Banks should more widely adopt application programming interfaces for sharing customer data with third parties because it's the best approach to ensuring information stays safe.
With Walmart reportedly weighing bids from Capital One alongside incumbent Synchrony Financial to handle its private-label credit card account, Synchrony's use of data and artificial intelligence are more important than ever.
Whatever the reason that Plaid, a prominent data aggregator, can no longer access data from Capital One, the situation demonstrates how fragile fintechs are when they lose banking access.
