JPMorgan says fintech middlemen like Plaid are ‘massively taxing’ its systems with unnecessary pings

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JPMorgan Chase

says fintech middlemen — the companies that have helped a new generation of financial apps connect with traditional checking accounts — are flooding the bank’s systems with unnecessary data requests.

“Aggregators are accessing customer data multiple times daily, even when the customer is not actively using the app,” a JPMorgan systems employee wrote last week in an internal memo to retail payments head Melissa Feldsher. “These access requests are massively taxing our systems.”

Of 1.89 billion data requests from middlemen hitting JPMorgan’s systems in June, only 13% were initiated by a customer for transactions, according to the memo, which was seen by CNBC.