Tangerine Add external accounts with Plaid | Tangerine Bank | Discussion forum

This isn't quite as game-changing as EQ Bank's EQ Bank Card, but it's up there. Can you confirm if external accounts added with Plaid can be used to facilitate money transfers in the "Transfer Money" screen in Tangerine, or does it just provide up-to-date balance information on your external accounts? The second is potentially useful, but I'm particularly interested in the former. If it does, I could see Tangerine potentially replacing their three linked external accounts with a third-party provider like Plaid in the future. Going forward, the Bank of Canada and federal government are keen to mandate open banking APIs on all federally-regulated financial institutions, so it's in institutions' best interests to get in on it now. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug

Me neither!

Virtual FIs put a 3rd party service in between and increasingly leaning on this path, cutting off all other options. But when you read into the T&Cs, the client is offered virtually no protection.

Any web parasite between me and a company I deal with is an unwanted risk. Why would they provide a service if they weren't getting a financial advantage from it?
RetirEd

Lodown said
… The total per user amount is only about $70. With such a low cost of doing business Plaid will be right back at it in no time. Everyone should stay far, far away from these "intermediaries"!

I agree.

Handing over login passwords, that can be used to send money, to Plaid for up to three different online banking systems for what? Just to be able to see the balances of those other accounts when I'm on Tangerine's online banking?

I already have 3 accounts linked via the old secure method, so I don't need to do this right now.

But moving forward, There is NO WAY I'm going to give a shady 3rd party (Plaid or Flinks) my username and password for my external bank accounts.

3rd Party APIs like Flinks or Plaid also log in to external accounts periodically to harvest data, and it even fails often. (TD has sued one of them successfully, but nothing was made public much, so most of the folks none the wiser.) Also, when these APIs fail to connect (which is often), your external bank notifies you (if it doesn't outright block your account) for "someone trying to log in to your account". During those fail connections, no body knows if your login credentials have been compromised or intercepted (Plaid or Flinks never disclose the failures.) On top of all the security implications, some of their new practises are even more outrageous. I have also seen mentions of these APIs taking screenshots and "canvas fingerprinting" your computer/phone browser. There is probably is far more going on behind the scenes than we'd ever know.

If Tangerine does not allow replacing existing linked accounts using the old secure method (token deposits), I won't be using Tangerine for any thing new and would only use them with the existing linked accounts. I guess it was a good run with Tang, and besides, I'm already sick of their lottery schemes.

This should be talked about much more than just a thread here, in my humble opinion. We shouldn't let banks get away with it so casually.

rhvic said
would it not be very prudent, immediately after initially using Plaid or FLinks to make such a connection, to change the banking passwords on the connected accounts?   

I am almost certain that once is enough for these APIs to "slurp" as much data on you from the target bank. We don't know how much is made available by the FIs to these APIs — and to what extent in history… and whether the username/password are the only credentials exchanged or maintained among them… or whether no other auth-tokens are established besides usernames/password between these FIs to continue exchanging data, since you have expressly consented to allow them to do that repeatedly.

The point is, there is a lot of unknown than known with these shadowy services. And that's why we should be super wary.

Wrayzor said
First post, but long time lurker.

The transition to the forced usage of Plaid to link external accounts disturbed me so much that I reached out to Tangerine to find out if that was actually the case. Their reply to my inquiry stated that up to 3 external accounts can still be linked via the old secure method (i.e. without involving Plaid) and if at the max, an existing linked account must be deleted before adding a new one. I haven't tried to see if this works as I don't need to link another account beyond the 3 that I currently have set up.

I don't understand why anyone would want to use Plaid or Flinks. There is next to no value add and so much risk and potential liability assumed.  

Good to know. I had 3 links, deleted 1 link, and try to add a third few days later. The system default to Plaid only.
If I do decide to add a 3rd again, will contact them for the 2 micro deposits method. I won’t use Plaid.

savemoresaveoften said
I had 3 links, deleted 1 link, and try to add a third few days later. The system default to Plaid only.

Not my experience. I, too, recently deleted links and re-added others (within my 3-link allowance), without any Plaid requirement. I kept getting the usual procedure for additional of a new link.