US fintech Plaid hires first chief financial officer on road to potential IPO

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US financial technology start-up Plaid has hired its first chief financial officer, a milestone in its highly anticipated plans to go public following a failed sale to Visa two years ago.

Former Expedia chief financial officer Eric Hart will join the 10-year-old company a year after leaving the travel group. His appointment fills a major vacancy in Plaid’s preparation for an initial public offering, which co-founder and chief executive Zach Perret has said is his aim for the company, without offering a timeline.

“Expedia was one of the leading players in that space of the digitisation of travel,” Hart told the Financial Times. “I see a very similar opportunity here, which is the digitisation of financial services. That’s been happening for a while, but I think we can all see that that’s accelerated over the last few years.”

San Francisco-based Plaid is one of the most closely followed fintechs in the US following a failed $5.3bn merger with Visa in 2021 and the subsequent growth of its business during the pandemic.

It last raised money privately at a valuation of more than $13bn in 2021, before the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates, which hit the valuations of many tech companies.

Plaid enables customers to connect their bank account to an outside application, such as a money transfer app or online mortgage lender, and to share any required data. Its business has benefited from customers increasingly using the sort of digital banking services it helps facilitate.

Early customers included Venmo, a popular money transfer app, and it now works with the likes of Shopify and Google. Plaid’s investors include Silver Lake Partners and Ribbit Capital, as well as the asset management arms of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and American Express.

Hart, who during his time at Expedia worked on a number of acquisitions including of vacation rental service Vrbo and booking site Orbitz, declined to comment on any potential plans for a public offering.

“I’m certainly going to make sure that we have an organisation, particularly from the finance perspective, that has a robust set of processes, procedures, compliance that we can be in a position if [an IPO] is the right milestone for us to take a step forward on,” he said.

The market for US IPOs has been challenged over the past year but has recently shown signs of activity, with high-profile listings by German sandal maker Birkenstock, chip designer Arm and grocery delivery group Instacart.

However, while these companies attained high prices in their IPOs, their subsequent trading performances have been mixed.