topic Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points in Personal Finance

Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

RedKhaos — Thu, 16 May 2024 03:56:56 GMT

Saw Plaid mentioned on another post and it brought to my mind a minor but nagging question. I've seen the infiltration by Plaid and similar apps into financial services and banks and I've been dodging it entirely for now and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

On Citi website, I know you can manually input your external bank account to pay for the cards. But if I want to deposit my Thankyou Points, I don't see a manual alternative to Plaid. Am I blind or am I stuck? I guess it doesn't really matter as I have multiple accounts now and I don't even care if Plaid records my personal info from one of them, but it's more of the principle and my general stubbornness.

What do people who hate Plaid do? And which bank account did you give them access to?

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

TrapLine — Thu, 16 May 2024 12:15:58 GMT

No knowledge on Plaid.

Do know that Citi Bank Cards allows me to transfer my "Thank You" Points to external financials with no problems and generally within a couple of days. It is very simple and is not an issue.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

Anonymalous — Thu, 16 May 2024 19:36:42 GMT

That seems to be new. I've always refused to use Plaid, but I was able to add an external bank account last year and redeem my points. But when I try to add a new account now, it doesn't give me any other alternatives. (Often Plaid is the default, but if you cancel out, they allow manual linking. But not in this case.)

There's always the check or statement credit options.

Edit: I just checked, and when I go under payments, and then choose "add payment account" from there, there is a "verify manually" option. That's probably how I did it -- I added the account to pay off the card, and then it automatically appeared when I went to redeem points, months later.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

ptatohed — Thu, 16 May 2024 21:49:14 GMT

What is all the fear over Plaid about? I've used it at a few institutions but the one that really stands out is acorns. I had to use Plaid to link each and every card I want to use for roundups so there ended up being 5+ uses of Plaid just with acorns. What is the concern?

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

RedKhaos — Fri, 17 May 2024 00:01:06 GMT

I just checked.

1) You can manually add an external account to pay for Citi Card balances (verify manually option exist)

2) You can NOT manually add an external account to cash out reward points (no second option exist here, only Plaid)

These are two separate processes. The account I added for 1) pay credit cards does not exist as an option for 2) cash out reward points.

@ ptatohed They are a 3rd party that banks explicitly disavow affiliation with. So in theory, and in my non-lawyer but wary mind, if Plaid is compromised and your bank accounts get drained, the banks don't have to make you whole since you "knowingly gave your login and password to Plaid". You would have to sue Plaid. And I guess that's fine and Plaid would probably get destroyed and there would be all sorts of regulations, but... that won't get my money back quickly.

Maybe that's highly unlikely or impossibily unlikely, but if the risk from Plaid is not zero and the benefit (to me) IS zero, the smart decision is to completely avoid it... which I was able to do until now.

I guess it's time I use burner bank accounts to firewall my finances?

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

Anonymalous — Fri, 17 May 2024 23:20:10 GMT

@ptatohed wrote:
What is all the fear over Plaid about? I've used it at a few institutions but the one that really stands out is acorns. I had to use Plaid to link each and every card I want to use for roundups so there ended up being 5+ uses of Plaid just with acorns. What is the concern?

When you use Plaid, you give them your login and password to a third party institution (like Citi), and they use your credentials to login as if they were you.

This is a nightmare from a security standpoint, because you're never supposed to share your password with anyone. And there is no technical reason for it anyway, except laziness. There are long-established and simple ways to establish the ownership of accounts without sharing passwords, and there are even ways to securely authorized and share more nuanced data. Though the latter would require integrating with numerous archaic and hetergenous systems, so Plaid did a crude hack instead.

The crude hack also gives complete access to everything in your account. You can't restrict it by type of transctions, or by a date range, or anything like that (which would be possible if they integrated with the systems). They get everything, including all your personal details.

While they deny the allegations, they've settled lawsuits for lying about how much they scrape and selling the data. Which isn't a surprise, because their incentives are all wrong. They get their money from the banks, not you. So you're the product, not the customer.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

SouthJamaica — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:30:30 GMT

@Anonymalous wrote:
That seems to be new. I've always refused to use Plaid, but I was able to add an external bank account last year and redeem my points. But when I try to add a new account now, it doesn't give me any other alternatives. (Often Plaid is the default, but if you cancel out, they allow manual linking. But not in this case.)

There's always the check or statement credit options.

Edit: I just checked, and when I go under payments, and then choose "add payment account" from there, there is a "verify manually" option. That's probably how I did it -- I added the account to pay off the card, and then it automatically appeared when I went to redeem points, months later.

@Anonymalous is right. This is the workaround. If you add an account as a payment account, it automatically populates the drop down menu for accounts to which you can direct deposit your cash rewards. It stays there for a limited amount of time, unless you regularly use it for payments.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

ptatohed — Wed, 22 May 2024 07:56:36 GMT

So, I had $65 to grab tonight. I chose my Chase bank account. I'm not sure where Plaid comes in???

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

SouthJamaica — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:47:58 GMT

@ptatohed wrote:
So, I had $65 to grab tonight. I chose my Chase bank account. I'm not sure where Plaid comes in???

Where it comes in is if you want to add an account to which to send the direct deposit which does not appear in your drop down menu. Your Chase account is probably there because you've used it in the past to pay Citi.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

xenon3030 — Wed, 22 May 2024 23:52:47 GMT

I decline to use Plaid permanently anywhere, due to personal/biz data protection.

Since I do not have a Citi checking, when I want to pay for my Citi CC, I use the bill pay services from my other banks. If the Citi CC would have a negative balance, I try to put some charges on it.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

RedKhaos — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 01:56:13 GMT

@ptatohed @Anonymalous @SouthJamaica You guys are 100% correct. The account from credit card payment does get pulled...eventually but it was two months since I didn't check since last time. It definitely wasn't immediate or a few days later for me and was longer than at least one billing cycle. Making a mental note to wait 2 months then in future. Still, a crappy implementation imho.

@ptatohed wrote:
So, I had $65 to grab tonight. I chose my Chase bank account. I'm not sure where Plaid comes in???

Direct deposit isn't an option for the Rewards+ for me. In fact it's not supposed to be a redemption option so I'm confused on why it's showing up for yours. Did you set Rewards+ as your main account?

Here's my screen that offers adding account for both my Custom Cash and Double Cash. Plaid is only option (on this screen).

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

coldfusion — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 12:58:21 GMT

@RedKhaos wrote:
@ptatohed @Anonymalous @SouthJamaica You guys are 100% correct. The account from credit card payment does get pulled...eventually but it was two months since I didn't check since last time. It definitely wasn't immediate or a few days later for me and was longer than at least one billing cycle. Making a mental note to wait 2 months then in future. Still, a crappy implementation imho.

I just set myself up as a DP by adding my PNC account as a payment method for my Sears TYP (I'd been planning on doing that anyway, this thread just motivated me to just go ahead and do it) and I'll pull a payment in a couple of days. I want to see if that will propgate and if so confirm how long it will take or if that only happens with payment methods added to a core card, as I use the same default payment account to pull payments for my core and Sears TYP cards.

It's been a while since

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

ptatohed — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 07:19:09 GMT

@RedKhaos wrote:
@ptatohed @Anonymalous @SouthJamaica You guys are 100% correct. The account from credit card payment does get pulled...eventually but it was two months since I didn't check since last time. It definitely wasn't immediate or a few days later for me and was longer than at least one billing cycle. Making a mental note to wait 2 months then in future. Still, a crappy implementation imho.

@ptatohed wrote:
So, I had $65 to grab tonight. I chose my Chase bank account. I'm not sure where Plaid comes in???

Direct deposit isn't an option for the Rewards+ for me. In fact it's not supposed to be a redemption option so I'm confused on why it's showing up for yours. Did you set Rewards+ as your main account?

Here's my screen that offers adding account for both my Custom Cash and Double Cash. Plaid is only option (on this screen).

RK, correct R+ either didn't allow direct deposit or allowed it at 0.5cpp (I forget), but the key is to link it with your other citi cards such as DC or CC. All the points pool, the points are 1cpp, and you get the 10% multiplier for redemption of the pooled points no matter how you earned them (DC, CC, or R+). You need to call in to link the cards.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

RedKhaos — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 03:18:34 GMT

I also have my accounts, Double Cash, Custom Cash and Rewards+, linked and the points are pooled with the Double Cash as my main. If I go to the Rewards+ page, it doesn't offer Direct Deposit as a redemption option. Only the Custom Cash and Double Cash have that option.

Re: Avoiding Plaid to Cash Out Citi Thankyou Points

ptatohed — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 06:03:44 GMT

@RedKhaos wrote:
I also have my accounts, Double Cash, Custom Cash and Rewards+, linked and the points are pooled with the Double Cash as my main. If I go to the Rewards+ page, it doesn't offer Direct Deposit as a redemption option. Only the Custom Cash and Double Cash have that option.

From my main accounts/dashboard page, I see the below image with out the flyout. The flyout is labeled View Linked Accounts & Redeem Points. Then, when it flies out, you see the below. If I click on Redeem on any of the given 3 cards, the following page looks exactly the same (like the screen shots I already shared upstream) just with a different card up at the top. Redemtion options are the same for all three cards (again, seen screen shop upstream).

I almost always redeem using the R+ 'just in case' to get the 10% multiplier. But I tested it with the CC once and still got it. I take direct deposit every time.

What does your main Accounts Dashboard show?