Why isn't my bank connecting to Plaid?

Plaid offers secure and easy ways to link your bank or financial accounts to apps you use to make payments and manage your money. Linking a bank account to Plaid is usually easy. However, this guide is for you if Plaid is not working for you and you’re wondering: why can’t Plaid connect to my bank?

We’ll cover common reasons why your bank account can’t connect to Plaid, what to do if Plaid’s not working, and what Plaid customer service suggests if you’re stuck.

And as a bonus we’ll also introduce Wise for easy ways to get a low cost multi-currency account you can use via Plaid and send, spend, and receive payments from all over the world.

Learn more about Wise

What is Plaid and why do I need it?

Let’s start right at the beginning. Plaid is used to connect banks and financial institutions with apps, securely and conveniently.

If you use an app like Venmo or CashApp, and need to connect your regular bank or credit union account to the app to make payments, you may find you’re directed to Plaid.

You’ll then need to enter your banking information and follow either an instant verification process or opt for a manual verification step instead.

The end result is that your bank is safely linked to the app you want to use, whether that’s to allow you to make payments, manage your budget, grow your business, invest — or anything else to do with managing your money on the move.

Why isn't my bank connecting to Plaid?

So if Plaid can’t connect your bank, what’s the issue? Plaid lists a few common problems¹, depending on whether you can’t find your institution, or you can see your bank but can’t get it to connect — let’s dive into them in more detail.

The financial institution you're trying to connect to isn't available on Plaid

If you can’t find your bank, credit union or other financial institution on Plaid it may be for one of these reasons:

• Plaid isn’t integrated with your financial institution yet: while Plaid works with an impressive 12,000 or so institutions globally, there are some which aren’t yet partnered with Plaid

• Plaid supports your bank, but it’s not compatible with the app you want to link: because Plaid can be used for such a variety of different apps, the information needed can vary widely too. In some cases, although Plaid supports a bank, the specific information required for an individual app may not yet be integrated

• Plaid can’t connect to your financial institution reliably enough: not all banks allow Plaid to connect your information to third party apps. In this case you may struggle to link your account to Plaid for that specific app, even if you’ve used Plaid before with that account and different apps

What can you do about this?

There are a couple of options if you’re struggling to connect your bank and can’t see it listed in Plaid:

• Ask for help from your bank or credit union
• Check with the specific app’s customer support team to see if it’s an issue at their end
• Create a Plaid Portal², and use it to open a ticket with Plaid Customer Service

If you’re considering making a Plaid Portal account you’ll be pleased to know it can be used to view and manage your Plaid connections, delete data, and disconnect financial accounts from apps.

It’s also where you’ll need to log in to open a support ticket to talk through any issues you might have with Plaid.

To create a Plaid Portal account, open the Plaid app or desktop site, then take the following steps³:

Step 1. Click Get started

Step 2. Read through the notifications, and tap Continue if you agree with the terms

Step 3. Enter a phone number, to get an OTP for registration

Step 4. Verify your phone number, and enter the personal information as prompted on screen

Step 5. You’ll need to complete a second verification step, as an additional layer of security

There were connection issues between Plaid and your financial institution

If you’ve already linked an account to Plaid and are now struggling to use Plaid with the account again, there could be a different set of issues at play:

• Service outages: unusual but not unheard of, your bank or Plaid may be suffering from a service outage

• You’ve changed your login or password: if you change your details for the linked account you’ll need to update your information before you can use Plaid again

• Your bank needs you to take a specific action: banks may prevent customers from using Plaid until they've completed a certain action, like agreeing to terms and conditions or completing security steps

What can you do to fix this?

The action you take now will depend on the nature of the problem:

• Service outages: high profile or widespread service outages hit the media pretty fast, but if you’re unsure whether this is the cause of your issue you can ask your bank or the app you’re using, check for messages from Plaid directly, or look at a commercial service like Down Detector⁴, which gathers user feedback to map out tech issues in real time

• You’ve changed your login or password: in this case you’ll need to verify your login and password on your bank’s own website first, before you return to Plaid. Once you’ve done this you should be able to connect, or reconnect, the accounts you need without any issues

• Your bank needs you to take a specific action: log into your online or mobile banking service and check for notifications which may mean actions need to be completed before you have full, normal use of your account. Once you’ve cleared these up, you should be good to go with Plaid again.

An international account, a local's experience: meet Wise

We’re all pretty used to managing our money on the go through apps and smart devices — but while many apps exist to let you pay and get paid in USD, there aren’t so many which offer global coverage and a great range of currencies. Meet Wise.

Wise offers multi-currency accounts you can open and manage through your smart device, to hold 50+ currencies, send payments to 80+ countries, spend with a linked card in 170+ countries, and get paid with local bank details in up to 10 currencies.

Accounts are free to open, and mean you can manage your money across currencies, when you shop overseas, travel, send payments or need to withdraw foreign cash.

Use your Wise account for your day to day needs — and you can also link your Wise Account through Plaid to a whole world of other handy apps like Venmo, Robinhood, Mercury and Chime. See how Wise can help, today.

Get started with Wise 🚀

Reach out to Plaid Customer Service

If you’re struggling to get your bank to connect to Plaid, you’ll probably need to talk to either the specific bank, or the app you’re trying to connect with to get it resolved. However, there are some helpful troubleshooting tips available through the Plaid support page⁵ too.

Here you can find out what Plaid error messages mean, and what to do if you’re seeing a specific error come up when you try to connect your bank to Plaid. There are also troubleshooting tips and information on what to do if you can’t use the Plaid automatic connect feature and need to connect manually instead.

Finally, if you’re still stuck, you can open a ticket with Plaid customer service through your Plaid Portal account.

Use this guide as a starting point if your bank account isn’t connecting to Plaid properly. With our troubleshooting tips and ways to overcome issues, you should be up and running in no time.

And don’t forget to check out the Wise Account as the easy way to manage your money internationally — and connect to top US financial apps, through Plaid.