# Welcome to the **Plaid Blog** April 15, 2026 ## [New Report] How AI is shifting customer expectations for fintech products #### Today, Plaid published The State of Intelligent Finance: AI, Agents and Trust, a research report revealing just how quickly consumer behavior and expectations are shifting as AI becomes more ingrained in the way people manage their finances. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/state-of-intelligent-finance-report-spring-2026/index.html) April 15, 2026 #### Product Updates – April 2026 Explore April updates: new User APIs, margin balances in Investments, automated data partner alerts, and smarter payment rules for better decisioning. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/product-updates-april-2026/index.html) April 09, 2026 #### Plaid and Perplexity expand integration to power personalized financial insights Plaid and Perplexity expand integration to connect more accounts, helping users track spending, monitor net worth, & plan with AI-powered tools. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/plaid-perplexity-ai-financial-insights-integration/index.html) April 02, 2026 #### Building a transaction foundation model to power intelligent finance Learn how Plaid’s transaction foundation model powers intelligent finance with richer context, better categorization, and scalable financial insights. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/building-transaction-foundation-model-intelligent-finance/index.html) March 31, 2026 #### Onboarding Without Compromises: Adaptive flows that stop fraud and drive conversion Onboarding isn’t just a form. It’s the first interaction that sets the tone for how users perceive your product. In those early moments, they decide whether it feels... [**Read the article**](/content/blog/onboarding-without-compromises/index.html) March 18, 2026 #### Product Updates - March 2026 AI built for financial services is reshaping how companies fight fraud, assess risk, and make lending decisions. This month, Plaid CTO Will Robinson breaks down what that looks... [**Read the article**](/content/blog/product-updates-march-2026/index.html) March 12, 2026 #### New era of fraud network intelligence: Early results from Plaid Protect See how Plaid Protect uses network intelligence to detect up to 59% more fraud earlier - without adding friction to the user experience. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/plaid-protect-network-insights/index.html) March 11, 2026 #### How Plaid powers intelligent finance with Perplexity Plaid and Perplexity are advancing intelligent finance with AI-powered portfolio insights and answers grounded in secure, user-permissioned investment data. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/powering-intellligent-finance-with-perplexity/index.html) March 10, 2026 #### Plaid brings next-gen asset verification solution to Encompass® Plaid’s Home Lending Report is now integrated directly into Encompass®, bringing digital asset verification into the LOS lenders already rely on. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/mortgage-asset-verification-encompass/index.html) March 04, 2026 #### Building a smarter chatbot How we got our docs-focused AI chatbot to finally understand reference documentation. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/smarter-chatbot/index.html) March 04, 2026 #### Instant Payments in Europe: From SEPA Compliance to Competitive Advantage Instant payments in Europe have moved from regulation to reality. New research from Celent, published by Plaid and Clearbank, explores how banks are performing today and where instant... [**Read the article**](/content/blog/instant-payments-europe/index.html) February 20, 2026 #### Product Updates - February 2026 Explore February’s updates including API-based bank verification, expanded cash flow and income insights, early access to new fraud dashboards, improved onboarding performance, and dashboard enhancements. [**Read the article**](/content/blog/product-updates-february-2026/index.html) February 19, 2026 #### Why intelligent finance needs purpose-built AI infrastructure AI is transforming open finance into intelligent finance. Learn how Plaid’s infrastructure and financial intelligence power smarter, more personalized experiences that keep up with how consumers manage their... [**Read the article**](/content/blog/intelligent-finance-ai-infrastructure/index.html) February 03, 2026 #### Build less, merge faster: avoiding diamond merges with a merge queue As the Plaid monorepo grew to hundreds of commits per day, the Developer Efficiency team found that operating without a merge queue had become increasingly costly. We set... [**Read the article**](/content/blog/merge-queue/index.html) January 15, 2026 #### Security as a platform: Codifying scans, signals, and guardrails At Plaid, we started treating security controls as infrastructure that enforces the same checks across every repo by default.