Astra Announces Partnership with Plaid to Enable Fintechs to Embed Automated Bank Transfers

Partnership establishes an integrated platform for mutual customers to easily add financial automation to their products

Astra, a technology company that offers advanced bank-to-bank transfer solutions, today announced a formal partnership with Plaid, a data network powering the digital financial ecosystem, to offer an integrated solution for developers to easily enable programmatic money movement for their customers.

As part of the partnership, companies can use Plaid’s Auth product in tandem with Astra’s automation platform to provide automated ACH transfers to their users with less friction. Now, developers are able to build advanced self-driving product experiences and enable programmatic money movement for their customers. For example, a new customer to an authorized application can easily connect a bank account, have its ownership validated, and set up their first automation in a single session. Moreover, with just a few clicks, the transfer automation will continue to work – moving funds for that user until modified or canceled. Another added benefit – customer deposits will continuously grow, and debit cards always have available funds for spending without manual intervention from the user.

“Our team is constantly striving to make embedding financial transfers into applications as simple as possible. By providing transfer technology via our transfer API, which includes risk mitigation and automation, developers can spend less time on edge cases and more time on their product,” said Gil Akos, co-founder and CEO at Astra. “This partnership will allow Astra to reach numerous new organizations facing complexities in facilitating transfers and we are excited to work with Plaid to streamline the process.”

For developers with a Plaid integration, adding Astra’s transfer automation is extremely easy. Using an instance of Plaid Link within an application, customers are able to connect their bank account and set up automated bank transfers to or from that connected account in minutes.

Astra’s lightweight API allows developers to quickly provide transfer automations for users to solve a variety of needs – a few examples outlined in the documentation includes:

• Sweep extra funds above a balance threshold from one account to another
• One-time transfers between bank accounts in T+1 settlement up to $25k per transfer
• Automated refill programs to move funds into a depository account from a secondary account based on a target balance

Akos continued, “Managing money is hard and with more financial accounts than ever before, the complexity can be overwhelming. Utilizing Astra powered by Plaid, developers can bolt on time-saving automations to improve the financial wellbeing for users with as little friction as possible. We are excited to see what you build next!”

Designed to connect and provide conductivity between any two financial accounts, Astra has found traction with companies looking to increase the deposits from their users from technology like sweep transfers, as well as with those looking to improve throughput for debit cards using automate refill transfers, all of which are scalable and accessible through a single integration. Astra also provides risk mitigation as a built-in service, ensuring that all transfers originating from their platform will complete as intended or cancel without any negative impact on the customer and no loss of funds.

The financial transfer market in the U.S. has exploded, and between traffic on the ACH network and AFT transfers, $62T was transacted in 2020, almost none of which was automated. As for complexity, the average number of financial relationships per person has increased from two to five in just three years, making the ability to move funds between accounts with low friction essential.

For more information on the specifics of the integration please refer to Plaid’s API docs, which includes high-level details on functionality as well as implementation. If you would like to learn more about Astra and how to add financial transfer automations to applications, please visit https://astra.finance.

ABOUT ASTRA

Astra is a leading provider of advanced bank-to-bank transfer technology for financial institutions, fintechs, and enterprises. With headquarters in San Francisco, the company was founded in 2016 by co-founders Gil Akos and Sam Morgan. Astra’s proprietary, vertically integrated API allows developers to easily embed financial automation within their existing products. For more information, visit https://astra.finance/.

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