What do the Sony Car and the Visa acquisition of Plaid have in common?

Visa announced in early that they were going to buy Plaid for $5.3 billion. Who is Plaid, and why are they worth so much? 

According to the CNBC article that published the announcement: 

“Plaid’s API software, often referred to as the “plumbing” behind fintech companies, lets start-ups connect to users’ bank accounts. It’s well-known among financial technology developers, but the average person interacting with it most likely wouldn’t recognize the name. High-profile Plaid customers include popular peer-to-peer payment app Venmo, mobile investing app Robinhood and cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini.”

The article went on to note that about 25% of American bank account holders have “connected” the company’s app. 

Meanwhile, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sony unveiled its electric concept car, the Vision-S, in Las Vegas earlier this month. 

The car is a novel way for Sony to market its various technologies within the automotive space. The approach is not dissimilar from what Microsoft did with the Surface Book: allowing each company to put their stake in the ground as to what they see as the ‘art of the possible.’ 

This TheVerge video does an excellent job of highlighting its features and showing what the car:

Although these two innovations occur in vastly different fields, they speak to a common reality: data. The concept of big data has been with us for a while, but what separates it from innovations like AI and blockchain is that its underlying elements can give us insights into how a particular innovation lies on the value spectrum:

• Cars are increasingly being “datafied.” According to Intel, autonomous vehicles will produce about 4 terabytes of data per day. So it should be no surprise that Sony’s concept car looks to harness the power of data. According to Time, the car has “33 sensors inside and outside the car” that help with ensuring the safety of passengers by detecting external threats and internal threats (e.g. falling asleep at the wheel). Coindesk takes this one step further, speculating that this type of move will help auto-makers more broadly make machine-to-machine cryptocurrency payments a reality. 
• Plaid and the value of verified data: The Plaid acquisition highlights the “4th V” that some use – veracity. Visa's purchase of Plaid illustrates how “boring data” that is of how quality can be worth billions of dollars. But such value proposition is not limited to the financial realm. Blockchain databases can offer a similar value proposition, as they force standardization and data quality standards. 

In future posts, we will test this model further to see how the four Vs: volume, variety, velocity and veracity help us understand the value of up-and-coming technologies and trends. 

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else