Microsoft and Plaid have merged their strengths to come up with a new financial management offering, “Money” in Excel.
There is officially 750 million users of Microsoft Excel. The feature will start in the U.S. but eventually, all of them will be able to plug in some fintech to their spreadsheets. Mostly thanks to Plaid.
Plaid announced the whole concept in a blogpost:
“One of the earliest forms of “fintech” is a budgeting spreadsheet. For years, people have relied on Microsoft Excel to budget and track expenses for their personal finances or businesses, typically copying data over from multiple sources. “

Plaid was the quite unique fintech deal when it was acquired by Visa for $5.3bn. If you give it permission, it provides a connection to financial accounts via Plaid Link from directly within the new Microsoft Money in Excel.
Read also: ICICI Bank launches WhatsApp banking services
This works perfectly to assist the Excel users to enhance spending habits by offering personalized insights on month-to-month spendings. It also considers value modifications for issues like recurring funds, financial institution charges, and overdraft warnings.
Eric Sager, COO, Plaid, says: “Plaid has all the time centered on powering innovators. So far that has consisted primarily of builders at startups like Venmo, Sq., Acorns, Mix, Dave and others.”
A “Monthly Snapshot” sheet features personalized charts and graphs based on your data to help you better understand your spending behaviors.

Eric Sager adds: “Nonetheless, it would shock folks to be taught that we’re speaking to greater than 25% of Fortune 100 corporations about severe fintech initiatives. Like Microsoft, many of those bigger, tech-forward corporations have little to no function in monetary companies immediately, however will doubtless assist form our fintech actuality for many years to return given their client footprint.”
Sources: https://www.pymnts.com/news/partnerships-acquisitions/2020/microsoft-plaid-team-money-in-excel/ https://blog.plaid.com/microsoft-announcement/ https://fintechzoom.com/fintech-news-fintech/microsoft-partners-plaid-to-turn-excel-into-a-fintech-app/