Integrating with Plaid Link allows your users to connect their financial accounts via Bridge. This flow enables ACH and wire money movement through linked bank accounts.
Please note we ONLY support Plaid for linking bank accounts. We do not integrate with Plaid to initiate money movement, including pulling or debiting from bank accounts.

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Overview of the Flow

  1. Request a Plaid Link Token from Bridge
  2. Initialize the Plaid Link SDK in your frontend using the link_token
  3. Exchange the Plaid Public Token back to Bridge
  4. Bridge fetches and creates External Accounts for linked bank accounts
  5. Retrieve External Accounts to initiate Transfers, Liquidation Addresses, etc.

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Step-by-Step Integration

1

First request a link_token

Request
curl --location --request POST 'https://api.bridge.xyz/v0/customers/{customer_id}/plaid_link_requests' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Api-Key: <API Key>' \
--header 'Idempotency-Key: <generate a uuid>' \
Response
{
  "link_token": "plaid_link_token_123",
  "link_token_expires_at": "2023-03-23T03:22:34.086Z",
  "callback_url": "https://api.bridge.xyz/v0/plaid_exchange_public_token/{uuid}"
}
Check out the API reference here.
2

Initialize the Plaid SDK

Start the Plaid Link SDK using the link_token obtained from the initial request. Include an onSuccess callback to the endpoint provided in the callback_url field. To enhance security, we strongly advise initiating the Bridge endpoint call from the server side to prevent exposure of your API key.Once the public_token has been successfully exchanged, the external accounts are created and stored asynchronously. It may take a few minutes for those external accounts to be reflected for the customer.
Request
curl --location --request POST 'https://api.bridge.xyz/v0/plaid_exchange_public_token/plaid_link_token_123' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Api-Key: <API Key>' \
--data-raw '{
      public_token: "plaid_public_token_456",
    }
}
Response
{
  "message": "Successfully Exchanged the Public Token."
}
3

Fetch Plaid linked bank accounts

After successfully exchanging the public token, Bridge will fetch all of the linked bank accounts from Plaid. This process normally takes a few seconds. Afterwards you can read from Bridge’s external accounts endpoint to fetch the customer’s newly linked external accounts using.
Request
curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.bridge.xyz/v0/customers/{customerID}/external_accounts \
  --header 'Api-Key: <api-key>'

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WebView & Bank Limitations

  • WebView support is deprecated for certain banks. See Plaid’s WebView recommendations.
  • Wire support is limited:
    • Chase: ACH only (wire support in progress)
    • Bank of America: ACH only
If you need wire capabilities for these institutions, use the Bridge API directly to create external accounts instead of relying solely on Plaid.