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Moneydance+ MD+ Plaid : UK Banks : When?

• Edit

infinitekind.moneydance

09 Feb, 2022 01:57 PM

Hi,

I noticed back in Oct21 it was mentioned UK banks may be on MD+ soon...

Posted by Maddy on Oct 06, 2021 @ 03:59 PM For the time being you can opt for manual downloads from UK banks. That being said, we expect to have support for downloading from UK banks within 4-8 weeks through a new connection method called Moneydance +.

• Any updates on timeline for MD+ support for UK Banks?

• Is there a list of supported UK institutions (eg. HSBC, First Direct, Nationwide, Halifax, Lloyds, TSB, Coventry BS...) - I couldn't find a list on the Plaid site?

1. 1 Posted by derekkent23 on 11 Feb, 2022 10:17 AM

   

   I am not support staff, just a user.
   Hi

   I was hoping support would reply to your post with up to date information, but as they haven’t this is what I know.

   Sean the Moneydance developer has allowed me to beta test the version of Moneydance+ using the third party Plaid, that includes the UK.

   I can only do limited testing as I have only one bank account and two credit cards.

   My bank works perfectly with Moneydance+. Click Download in the Moneydance register and transactions download. There seems to be only a delay of a few hours from a transaction appearing on my on line account and Moneydance+ being able to download it.

   I have two credit cards. They both have the same issue.

   I manually add transactions to Moneydance as they occur. At the end of each month I download a OFX transaction file from my on line account and import into Moneydance. This works well, my dates, the dates on my online account and in the OFX file all line up. However when I use Moneydance+ the transaction date is always the next working day. A purchase say on a Friday ends up with Monday’s date at odds with the date I manually enter, in my online account and in the OFX file. Talking with Sean it appears to be that a credit card issue. However in the last few day I took out another credit card and although it only has two transaction on it I am getting the same results as my main card. Whatever the reason, although Moneydance is very convenient for my two credit cards I cant live with the date issue but will continue to use it for my bank. Others may not find the date issue a problem and the issue may not exist with all institutions. Time will tell as other try the service in the UK.

   Although I have asked Sean when the UK will be made available for general use no date has been given.

   You can however sign up to a free Plaid account and test connecting to UK banks.
   Create a free account here: https://my.plaid.com Click the link to Add Account. You get the same signup screen as Moneydance+. See if your Banks are listed. At this point you can back out and exit. Not actually signing into your bank.

   Hope this helps.

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by infinitekind.mo... on 11 Feb, 2022 11:58 AM

   

   Many thanks for the comprehensive response.

   I too have noticed 'out-of-sync-by-one-day' dates that don't match up with expected transaction dates especially with my HALIFAX current and credit-card accounts (although this is appears to be a bank rather than MD/Plaid issue).

   Many of my UK accounts now have 2FA (Two Factor Authentication - usually via SMS or App) - am I right in thinking that PLAID/MD+ won't work if 2FA is set on an account?

   • Edit

3. 3 Posted by derekkent23 on 11 Feb, 2022 03:17 PM

   

   I am not support staff, just a user.
   Hi

   In the UK Plaid works with your bank using Open Banking. This mean when you connect for the first time using Moneydance+ via Paid you go through your normal bank login. Plaid directs you to your on line account. The process is the same as if you were login on line including 2FA. At the end of the login your bank will tell you it is allowing access to Plaid to download transactions. The bank following Open Banking provides Plaid with an token so it has access to your transactions. The token means Plaid does not store your user name, password, etc and when downloading via Moneydance+ all you do is click the download button. The token last a fixed time period, months, not sure how long, I think it depends on the bank and then you have to follow the setup process again. You can cancel Plaid access from within Moneydance or by logging in using your browser to you online bank account and cancel Plaid access from there.

   I got the following statement from Sean the Moneydance developer when I asked how secure the process was in the UK.

   ‘For UK banks how it works is that Plaid will redirect your browser to the bank's site which authenticates you directly. Neither Plaid nor Moneydance ever sees your password or even username for that matter. The bank redirects your browser back to Plaid with a token that is used to access your accounts at that bank for some period of time (usually 3 months, I think).

   As soon as the access token is acquired by the Moneydance+ server, it is encrypted using the public key from your linked data file. That means that only your data file can ever decrypt that access key, and even our server cannot access it.

   I made every effort possible to not require the Moneydance+ server at all and have all communication go between Moneydance and your bank or Moneydance and Plaid. Unfortunately, that's simply impossible, so we went with the route where the MD+ server is the smallest most basic piece that sees as little information as possible.

   So, when MD downloads transactions, it has to go through the MD+ server which authenticates your data file's public key and then basically pipes the connection through itself to Plaid which returns your transactions.
   (logging nothing)’

   Hope this helps.

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4. 4 Posted by infinitekind.mo... on 11 Feb, 2022 04:03 PM

   

   Thank you for taking the time to share and for your very comprehensive response to my UK Bank 2FA/MD+ query.

   I' m looking forward to MD+ full support of UK banking soon. :)

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5. System closed this discussion on 13 May, 2022 04:10 PM.