Earlier this year, Plaid launched the Plaid Exchange, an open finance infrastructure with the necessary tools for financial institutions to bring scalable API-led data access, control and transparency to market in approximately 12 weeks according to a press release.

To add further value to the exchange, Plaid recently added an instant account activity feature that gives users on the exchange the ability to send transactions to authorized developers within seconds of a user's activity. With this new feature users get the most consistent and up-to-date financial information on their account, which is especially important to hourly workers with varying incomes or inconsistent pay hours due to the pandemic.

"Instant, real-time data has become standard for consumers today and it's a critical piece of information that our users need to make sound financial decisions," Atif Siddiqi, CEO of Branch, and one of the Plaid Exchange beta testers, said in the release. "Plaid provides our users with the most current picture of their transaction history, empowering their daily financial decisions."