n-Plaid's Sandbox Gets a Connection Working Fast. Going Live Is a Different Job.
Plaid's API is split into separate products you call individually: Auth returns verified account and routing numbers, Transactions returns transaction history, Identity verifies who holds the account, and Investments and Income cover those specific use cases. Plaid's Quickstart and sandbox get a working demo connected to simulated bank data fast. We build the part after that: the real data pipeline that takes what Plaid returns and gets it doing something specific inside your underwriting, accounting, or verification process.
What the main Plaid products actually return
Auth is the product most businesses reach for first: it returns an account and routing number after a user links their bank through Plaid Link, which is what you need before setting up an ACH debit instead of waiting days on a manual micro-deposit verification.
Transactions returns transaction history for a linked account, which is what feeds an underwriting model, a budgeting feature, or a reconciliation process that needs to see what actually moved through an account rather than just confirming it exists.
Investments and Income cover narrower cases, pulling investment holdings or verifying income from bank or payroll data, and are worth knowing about even though they come up far less often than Auth or Transactions in general Plaid integration work.
Where the sandbox stops and real integration work starts
Plaid's Quickstart and sandbox let you build and test against simulated bank accounts and data before touching anything real, which is genuinely useful for getting a basic Link flow working in a day or two. Moving to production bank connections is a separate step with its own application and review process on Plaid's side.
The harder part is almost never the connection itself. It's shaping what Plaid hands back, raw transaction data, an account identifier, a verification result, into whatever your underwriting system, accounting software, or payment flow actually needs it formatted as, and handling the real-world mess of accounts that re-authenticate, data that's temporarily unavailable, or users who connect the wrong account the first time.
What We Build With Plaid
Account verification before an ACH debit, not after a decline
We build the flow that uses Plaid Auth to confirm an account and routing number, and that the name on the account matches, before you set up a debit, instead of finding out something was wrong days later when it bounces.
Transaction data shaped for the system that actually uses it
We build the pipeline that pulls transaction history through Plaid's Transactions product and feeds it into your underwriting, accounting, or reporting system in the format it needs, instead of a one-off script that breaks the first time Plaid's response changes.
Past the Quickstart and not sure what production actually needs?
Tell us what you're verifying or pulling, account details, income, transaction history, and we'll tell you what the real build looks like beyond the sandbox.
Working with Plaid's sandbox and not sure what changes in production?
A working demo against simulated data and a production integration that handles real accounts reliably are two different projects. Tell us what you're building and what financial data it actually needs, and we'll build the part between Plaid's response and your system actually using it.
Let's talk