Alain Meier has been working since his Stanford undergrad years on technologies to help fintech companies and their customers prove their users are who they say they are. In 2013, Meier co-founded Cognito, a platform that expedites and secures identity verification, and he served as its CEO until its sale to Plaid for a reported $250 million in January 2022. Meier is now Head of Identity at Plaid.

Many of Plaid’s customers were already using Cognito’s tech by the time of the acquisition, including buy-now-pay-later company Affirm and corporate-finance-focused fintech Brex. Since then, Plaid has expanded upon its focus of connecting bank accounts to fintech apps and has dived into crypto. The company recently launched Wallet Onboard, which connects crypto wallets to decentralized Web3 apps.

Meier is a founding member of the Stanford Bitcoin Group, a platform for Stanford students to learn, explore, and research bitcoin and related technologies. He was named to Fortune's 40 Under 40 list in 2022.

Privacy, Cybersecurity, Fast Company, FinTech Cryptocurrency, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Identity Theft,