11–20 of 156 posts
It is absolutely crazy that in 2021, banks still don't have proper secure APIs for other software to interface with. Plaid is a major disaster waiting to happen. Are there any banks moving in that direction? I know of exactly zero in Canada.
It is particularly sad how common scenarios this are for users, especially in the US. I have known how terrible applications like Plaid (and alternatives) were, but at various points have been required to use them to do something like pay my rent (this is also a very common theme in my life: I strongly dislike a certain company or app, but find myself required to use them regardless, even knowing that my usage and in…
It is absolutely crazy that in 2021, banks still don't have proper secure APIs for other software to interface with. Plaid is a major disaster waiting to happen. Are there any banks moving in that direction? I know of exactly zero in Canada.
I think companies should still provide a way to link accounts via small deposits. It takes a few days, but at least you don't have to share your credentials. (This applies to US accounts, maybe there are better solutions elsewhere.) If you use Plaid, I think it should only be if there's no other option and you change your credentials after. I've always thought giving away your credentials to a screen scraping company…
https://plaid.com/docs/auth/coverage/same-day/
Their UI makes it really hard to find this option though, because Plaid makes their money from scraping your transaction history, which doesn't work if you do the micro-transaction approach.
As a consumer, I'm not a big fan of Plaid's business model. But to be fair to them, a lot of the security issues come from the fact that until very recently, no US banks had any form of API to allow delegation of access. Based in large part on the success of Plaid, this is starting to change; some institutions are banning Plaid from using the password-based flow, and are replacing this with a more secure OAuth flow:
https://plaid.com/docs/link/oauth/
This is the correct solution to the technical problem at hand. It'll benefit other systems too; for example it should be possible for open-source accounting software to use this flow to export your transaction history in a maintainable way, which previously relied on scraping that's unfeasible for an OSS project to keep up with (but which Mint could afford to implement).
Hopefully the banks let you selectively grant permissions "can view my account list" and "can view my transaction list", or at least surface those permissions, so that consumers can be aware of what they are giving away -- I'd wager that most end users have no idea that Plaid is slurping their transaction history, and would be even more shocked that it's maintaining ongoing access to continue doing the same.
It is absolutely crazy that in 2021, banks still don't have proper secure APIs for other software to interface with. Plaid is a major disaster waiting to happen. Are there any banks moving in that direction? I know of exactly zero in Canada.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=current...
Also apparently if you want to use Plaid with many different online banking portals, you need to permanently disable 2FA, also no thanks.
It is particularly sad how common scenarios this are for users, especially in the US. I have known how terrible applications like Plaid (and alternatives) were, but at various points have been required to use them to do something like pay my rent (this is also a very common theme in my life: I strongly dislike a certain company or app, but find myself required to use them regardless, even knowing that my usage and in…
Part of the challenge is there is no great way to easily get my data out of banks and accessible in one place. Business model aside, they do solve a real problem in a space where there are no real incentives for banks to provide their own solution. I'd love to see a subscription-based, privacy-focused option with API access targeting the consumer personal finance crowd. I think Tiller may get some of the way there, b…
It is absolutely crazy that in 2021, banks still don't have proper secure APIs for other software to interface with. Plaid is a major disaster waiting to happen. Are there any banks moving in that direction? I know of exactly zero in Canada.
It is particularly sad how common scenarios this are for users, especially in the US. I have known how terrible applications like Plaid (and alternatives) were, but at various points have been required to use them to do something like pay my rent (this is also a very common theme in my life: I strongly dislike a certain company or app, but find myself required to use them regardless, even knowing that my usage and in…
So in US if you have enough money you can do anything and then settle in court if problem arise.
Plaids terms are really concerning to me as a user and I’m not willing to give them my bank credentials. My main fear is that they get hacked and my credentials are used to drain my accounts. Plaid waives any liability and my bank doesn’t do much if my credentials are used to do stuff like initiate wire transfers. Venmo is doing this weird thing where for some transactions they are saying they require plaid to get my…