Trying to get an Affinity account

[disney2]

I tried to sign up for an Affinity account and got all the way through it until it was time to fund my account.  My local bank wasn't listed on Plaid there although it is in Plaid for YNAB and that's where I have most of my money.  What do I do now?  It's annoying to go through Plaid.  

[Anonymalous]

I'd flat out refuse to go through Plaid. The first rule of computer security is you never give your password to anyone.

Can't you just open an account and then do an ACH transfer afterwards?

[disney2]

I didn't see an option for that at all. It appeared that plaid was the only way to do it. I tried sending them a technical help ticket but didn't see a reply. 

[LawStudentCivilis]

It can't hurt to give them a call.

[Anonymous]

Became a member in Nov and since I was working on my CSP SUB I lowered my CA as low as possible and opened 3 accts. $990 for Cash Back Debit and 1K on 2 other accts. All processed as purchases!

[SouthJamaica]

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@disney2 wrote:

I tried to sign up for an Affinity account and got all the way through it until it was time to fund my account.  My local bank wasn't listed on Plaid there although it is in Plaid for YNAB and that's where I have most of my money.  What do I do now?  It's annoying to go through Plaid.  

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Usually there's an option to add the external account "manually", which will involve their making 2 trial deposits.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymalous wrote:

I'd flat out refuse to go through Plaid. The first rule of computer security is you never give your password to anyone.

Can't you just open an account and then do an ACH transfer afterwards?

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Yeah I was wondering about that.  I've been seeing Plaid pop up a lot lately, and it does make me nervous.

[Anonymalous]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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@Anonymalous wrote:

I'd flat out refuse to go through Plaid. The first rule of computer security is you never give your password to anyone.

Can't you just open an account and then do an ACH transfer afterwards?

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Yeah I was wondering about that.  I've been seeing Plaid pop up a lot lately, and it does make me nervous.

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It should. There are proper ways of doing it, but it would require all the banks to agree on an API, which would allow them to verify credentials, and limit the data being passed. But since banks are slow-moving and use idiosycratic and outmoded systems, Plaid came up with a hack to get around the proper way of doing things. Unfortunately, it involves violating the most basic rules of security, and gives them full control of your account. They're also hyper-aggressive about scraping information about all transactions that you've made with the account, not just the specific information they need.

[Anonymous]

Once the account is opened, Affinity only uses trial deposit method for linking external accounts.  My credit card funding for the initial account opening was coded as a purchase on Citi DC.  Between checking and savings, I funded $2,000 for $40 in cash back.  Consider using a credit card for initial funding to gain some extra rewards.

[xenon3030]

There is an active settlement of 58M on Plaid over such issues and if you used it between 01/2013 to 11/2021, you may file a cliam. I am not sure whether its issue still exists.

I did not know about Plaid issues. While I searched my emails, I also found one email from Plaid.com in December 2021, used it once to fund Robinhood to buy a few stocks (beyond the settlement period). While hoping that they did not collect too much information, it might be better to use other places to buy stocks with trustworthy transaction platforms.

If you want to fund, you may use debit/credit card directly if feasible without using Plaid. I opened Affinity checking a few months ago while I do not have email from Plaid for such transaction, meaning that it was never used.