In this episode of The Challengers, Josh Liggett and Zack Miller discuss Visa's $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid. Admittedly, data aggregation isn't that sexy but Zack thinks it is the underpinning of modern financial technology. Data agg enables customer financial data to move securely between financial institutions and fintech apps.

Zack thinks Visa is interested in leveraging Plaid's inroads into some of the top fintech firms (Robinhood, Venmo, Square) as the payments firm continues to build out its own ecosystem. Josh says that people don't really understand what Plaid does, and yet Plaid -- and solutions like it -- are vital to the growth of the digital finance industry.

Before we jump into the podcast, I wanted to introduce you to Outlier, Tearsheet’s leading membership program. It’s designed for top fintech and financial service professionals to stay on top daily of the biggest trends, the top companies, and the leaders of this next generation of finance. Get industry briefings by experts like the ones we’re doing this January on best practices in PR and customer acquisition. Find out more at Tearsheet.co/outlier