Really? Both times I got a loan they wanted bank statements from all of my main accounts and verifiable income history, but they didn’t care that I was paying from an account that I had just opened for the specific purpose of paying the loan.

I'm not OP, but I assumed from their post that they meant the loan provider wanted Plaid access in order to perform underwriting - as in give us access to your account(s) so we can pull your banking history via an automated manner instead of sending PDFs.

Could be wrong though, as I never considered it'd be used for payments at all.

same. maybe it just depends on the bank, but i can't imagine why that would matter at all. they have the whole picture of your financial history, generally. what does it matter whether that one bank account has only enough in it to pay off the loan every month.