Robinhood’s Value Proposition:

Democratize the American financial system (through a commission-free service for transacting stock, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies).

Ripple’s Value Proposition: Help financial institutions process customer’s transfers (payments) anywhere in the world reliably, cost-effectively, and instantly.

There was no standard infrastructure that allowed a customer to securely authorize viewing of bank account information in real-time — until the launch of Plaid, a fintech that has become the industry’s  “super-connector” by creating a secure portal and process to exchange financial information back and forth between customer, applications, and banks.