What to Do When Your Plaid Connection Isn’t Current
Is your Plaid financial connection not current? Understand the reasons and get clear steps to troubleshoot and update your data for reliable app access.
Plaid securely connects your financial accounts to various applications, allowing them to access your financial data like transactions and balances. Ensuring this data is up-to-date is important for effective financial management. A non-current connection means the data may not reflect your most recent financial activity.
What “Current” Means for Your Plaid Connection
A “current” Plaid connection means the link between your financial institution and the application is active, authenticated, and retrieving the most recent financial data, including transaction history and account balances. Plaid regularly refreshes this data. While not real-time, “current” indicates the most recent available information is being fetched.
Plaid typically checks for new transaction data multiple times per day, with refresh frequency varying by financial institution. Applications using Plaid can also initiate on-demand updates for transactions, often through a “refresh” button, to pull the latest data. This ensures applications have accurate information.
Why Your Plaid Connection May Not Be Current
A Plaid connection can lose its “current” status due to changes in your financial institution’s online banking credentials (e.g., updated passwords, usernames, or multi-factor authentication settings). If login details change, Plaid’s existing connection becomes invalid, preventing updated information access.
Financial institutions may update their online banking platforms or security protocols, temporarily disrupting Plaid’s connection. Your bank might also require you to agree to new terms or complete a security verification. Accounts can become locked due to too many failed login attempts. Temporary service interruptions on either Plaid’s or your bank’s side can lead to connectivity issues.
Steps to Re-establish a Current Plaid Connection
If your Plaid connection is not current, first log into your financial institution’s website or mobile app. This confirms your credentials are correct and that there are no issues with your bank’s online services.
Once direct access is confirmed, you will need to re-link or re-authenticate your account within the application that uses Plaid. This process involves finding an “update credentials” or “reconnect account” button within the application’s settings. You will then be guided through the Plaid Link user interface, where you’ll select your financial institution and re-enter your username, password, and any required multi-factor authentication codes. After successfully re-entering your information, you can verify if the connection is current by looking for a “last updated” timestamp or recent transactions within the connected application.
If issues persist, contacting the application’s support team is advisable. They can offer specific troubleshooting tips or confirm if there are broader system issues. Plaid also provides a Consumer Help Center and a Plaid Portal for users to manage connections, but does not offer direct customer service via phone.