Online Banking Transaction Download
I am wondering how reliable the Plaid service is in connecting online to banks and downloading transactions.
Background: I used MD in the past but switched to a competing product as the transaction download capability was extremely limited (This is pre-Plaid integration). The product I am currently using has added Yodlee for its online transaction. download. The past 6 months or so, someone with Yodlee is broken and at least one of my banks won't work.
I am thinking of switching back to MD, but want to understand now stable Plaid is. Anyone have any thoughts?
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1 Posted by sth on 11 May, 2024 06:45 PM
I have used plaid reliably for linking to Schwab bank and in the past, Fidelity Bank as well as two smaller credit unions. I have lately had trouble linking to AMEX savings, but that is probably due to AMEX combining their logins for banking and credit card confusing Plaid.
Plaid is trying to download data for you to keep on your own system and private, there is no copy kept by plaid anywhere on the net as far as I know. The banks want you to make your private data all available to them on line. It is a cat and mouse game and there will be hiccups. Perhaps someone else with experience to Yodlee can talk about their data privacy arrangements.
(NOT IK Support)
2 Posted by dtd on 11 May, 2024 09:30 PM
When Plaid works, it works well, when it doesn't work, it tends to continue not working.
Fidelity Investments quit working with Plaid (Fidelity's choice) because Fidelity wants you to use a different aggregator, In this case, nothing Plaid can do about that. Luckily, Fidelity still works with Direct Connect (for now)
When something changes with a Bank (like instituting 2FA or such), it can quit working with Plaid, but that usually gets fixed (eventually).
But if a bank is supposed to work, and just stops, that seems to be something that never changes. I find that most store credit cards won't work... I've gotten every single account of mine working, though, except Kohl's - that worked up till a year ago, but hasn't worked in a year or so.
I don't know what version of MD you already own, but it will need to be fairly recent to work with Plaid/MD+ --- to test your scenarios, download the latest MD in trial mode (works with 100 manual transaction limit) and sign up for a trial of MD+ --- all free for a while, and test whether your banks/credit cards/etc work for you, before decided to upgrade MD or subscribe to MD+
Hope that helps.
3 Posted by dtd on 11 May, 2024 09:33 PM
Oh, also, MD+ is basically United States and some Canada. So for many, Plaid won't work for them at all.
4 Posted by dtd on 11 May, 2024 09:36 PM
I guess my final take is I personally will always use OFX for an account if possible, and use Plaid/MD+ as a way to make other banks work (USAA/Chase/Schwab quit using direct connect). The reason for this is OFX tends to be quick to download, whereas Plaid can take a while (3 days or so) to download due to the nature of Bank ---> Plaid ---> you.
5 Posted by dwg on 12 May, 2024 12:35 AM
Institutions in the U.S. appear to be slowly shutting down their Direct Connect systems, fundamentally I believe as a cost saving measure. If you want automatic downloads the attitude seems to be use an aggregator, however that does not mean they will co-operate or help an aggregator to get the data on your behalf, they simply do not care.
They really do not want to have to spend the time, resources, money etc on these type of things or in dealing with their "customers" like this, their goal is to use your money to make money or make loans to you to make money. Customer service is something many only provide lip service to. There is no legislation like Open Banking that forces them to provide any data in any way. You see many even providing limited, if any, manual download capability as well, you want it enter it by hand would seem to be the attitude of some.
Under these conditions any and every aggregator is going to have problems, at least at times, in sourcing the data, we are seeing some institutions even forcing the direction the aggregators need to take if they are to get the data, and probably charge the aggregators a fee as well, nothing like more fees.
Many institutions will only do what they are forced to and at times the only thing some really understand are large fines, some may even see fines as a cost of doing business but the ultimately penalty is the cancellation of their financial service license, that gets their attention.
System closed this discussion on 11 Aug, 2024 12:40 AM.