[GNC-dev] Patelco stopped supporting OFX... other options

[John Ralls]

> On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:09 AM, jean laroche <ripngo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> More about the Plaid thing:
> 
> 1) I found quite a few projects in github having to do with plaid. People writing their own financial solutions.
> One that's somewhat relevant here is this one: https://github.com/ebridges/plaid2qif
> Even though the author picked qif instead of ofx (a mistake I think) it shows that people are doing this.
> 2) I wrote my own plaid->ofx python package. It's not particularly difficult. For my own solution I integrated it with a python package that allows connecting to a keepass database (keepass is a password manager) so all the access tokens are saved in keepass. I'll put it in github but I'm not sure how useful it will be for other people as I tailored it to my own needs.
> 3) I asked plaid whether it was possible to get access to investment accounts with a free developer license, and if not how much that would cost. I haven't received an answer yet.
> 4) There are alternatives to plaid but I'm not sure whether they work equally well, or whether they can give you access to investment accounts. I can list Quovo, Tiller, MX. All of them tend to be geared toward companies, not individuals, like plaid. But it's possible that they can be used by individuals. All of the seem to use OAUTH, which I'm sure many people will have issues with (because the companies keep tokens that give them access to your bank accounts).

I found an explanation of Quicken's Express Web Connect at https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7851859/faq-how-quicken-connects-with-your-financial-institution-tips-tricks-and-best-practices.

The short answer is it works the same as plaid and friends: The transaction data is retrieved nightly and stored on Intuit's servers and Quicken phones home to retrieve them.

Regards,
John Ralls