> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.knotapi.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Plaid integration

> Use a Plaid processor_token with Knot's Create Session endpoint to detect merchants where users spend and personalize the CardSwitcher merchant list.

## Overview

<Note>
  The Plaid integration is optional. It only personalizes the merchant list in the CardSwitcher experience. It is not required to integrate any Knot product, including [TransactionLink](/transaction-link/quickstart) for retrieving SKU-level transaction data.
</Note>

Knot has a partnership with Plaid, described in Plaid's documentation [here](https://plaid.com/partner-directory/). This partnership allows Knot to use Plaid's `processor_token` functionality to retrieve transaction data from Plaid for the purpose of detecting merchants where users are spending. Doing so can help improve conversion.

Create a `processor_token` through Plaid's API and provide it to Knot when you create a session to initialize the Knot SDK. Knot then automatically detects merchants where the end user is spending and makes them more prominent in the user experience. This will in turn help improve conversion for your product experience. Please note that this process takes a number of seconds, so users will not immediately see a modified list of merchants when the SDK is initialized. Instead, the personalized list appears after a number of seconds on the merchant list screen, when returning to the screen after authenticating to a merchant, or when returning on subsequent sessions.

## Setup

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create a processor token" titleSize="h3">
    Follow [Plaid's documentation](https://plaid.com/docs/transactions/partnerships/knot/) to create a `processor_token`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Send the processor token when creating a session" titleSize="h3">
    Pass the `processor_token` in the request to [Create Session](/api-reference/sessions/create-session).
  </Step>
</Steps>


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