This year’s fintech predictions, from the company powering most of the industry

This could be a banner year for fintech, according to one of the industry’s most dialed-in CEOs.

Zach Perret runs Plaid, which links more than 20 million customer bank accounts to financial technology apps like Robinhood, Venmo and Coinbase. The start-up recently raised $250 million at a $2.7 billion valuation and added Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker to its board.

The San Francisco-based firm is also backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, NEA, and the venture arms of Citi, American Express, Google and Goldman Sachs, among others.

The start-up, founded by Perret and the company’s chief technology officer, William Hockey, plays an important role in the fintech ecosystem. As of December, 25 percent of people in the United States with bank accounts have connected to Plaid through an app — a 13 percent increase from last year, the company said.

If nothing else, Perret has a unique bird’s-eye view based on Plaid’s back-end role for the most well-known start-ups in Silicon Valley. He has 11 things to watch in the burgeoning industry in 2019: