A popular credit card processing company, Plaid, is under fire from consumer regulatory agencies. Here's the information you need to know in order to determine whether you qualify for a potentially large settlement from this company that has been utilized nationwide for years to process credit card transactions.
 

What Happened to Spark the Class Action Lawsuit

Consumers alleged that Plaid had accessed their accounts in a manner that violates civil law. Plaid does the backend handling of many consumer transactions. Many common companies, such as Venmo, Ally, and more utilized Plaid to perform transactions.

Plaid allegedly obtained logins for accounts that used the service. This includes all Venmo users who performed actual credit card transactions, as well as users from countless other digital services. If you're wondering whether you're eligible for a settlement, you'll first need to determine whether you used a service in the timeline that the consumer class action lawsuit dictates.

Fortunately, the law firm handling the class action suit has a handy tool available online, free of charge.
 

The Data Science Behind What Happened

From 2013 to early in 2021, Plaid provided middle man-like services to consumers who were performing credit card transactions. You may be familiar with these interlay logins. Plaid would make it look like the login screen to the user's bank account. Many people assumed that it was their own bank accounts, when in fact it was a form that provided raw login details directly to Plaid.

For users, in short, this means that Plaid had unfettered access to their login credentials. The privacy implications of this are enormous. This means that one rogue employee could have easily collected cleartext, raw login details from users. To be clear, there is no allegation stating that this happened; however, this is a data science privacy violation.
 

The Scope of This Class Action Lawsuit

We've only named a couple of the services implicated in this Plaid lawsuit. Unfortunately, there are more than 5,000 services who utilized Plaid as a payment processor. This lawsuit was initiated by eleven people who complained in civil court initially regarding this data privacy matter. It is being tried in the northern district of California.

After the eleven initial people, referred to in the lawsuit as "Class Representatives," filed the lawsuit, they linked up with a law firm. This law firm provided the link we shared above. The purpose of this is to raise awareness that it is open until late April of 2022. There will be many class members in this lawsuit.
 

What Is the Settlement That Is Being Offered to Class Members?

You may be wondering what settlement is being offered to class members. To be clear, the settlements from these lawsuits typically isn't large. This is because of several factors, including lawyers who collect a commission, Class Representatives who may receive more money in the event of a finding for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and a huge number of Class Members who join.

If there is a finding for the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, it likely will be later on in chronology, such as next year. This is because, at the moment, Plaid is denying all wrongdoing. Therefore, there isn't a set settlement being offered. Plaid so far has indicated that they are willing to fight this allegation to stop the plaintiffs from being able to collect on the settlement.

In short, there is no actual settlement being offered to Class Members. Remember that just like any other class action lawsuit, it is imperative to sign up while the sign up is open. This particular one has a huge number of services impacted; this makes the theoretical maximum number of class action members in the millions. The larger the number of potentially impacted people as stated in the original court documents' allegation, the smaller the settlement will be for those who were impacted.
 

The Final Verdict

Assuming that Plaid continues on their current course of denying any and all allegations against the company, this case will very likely go to trial. The facts that a prominent law firm has been selected, there are so many class members already, and there is so much public interest, it would be very surprising to see a judge deny this case from going forward in court.

There are many cases in our articles. This one shows more promise than most.