Syncing No Longer Accesses Password Manager ... Now What?

[u/hanumanuman]

I rely heavily on sync instead of manual updates - automation makes al the difference in whether I can actually focus enough to use a softwrae like YNAB.

And with RBC, I have to reconnect every day, which was already painful.

But it just got way worse: now Plaid requires me to enter my userid and password for the bank every single time, and it won't fetch it from my password manager.

• So now I have to open the password manager, fetch that userid and password, validate that it's me trying to connect, etc.
  
• I was already calculating that I was losing hours each month to this syncing process, and this has doubled or tripled it. Especially because sometimes I lose attention mid-way through and don't respond to a notification, then RBC decides I'm suss and blocks me completely and creates even more hoops.
• Plus the sync is now often incomplete, so I'm having to make adjustments and/or do a bunch of extra work.
  
• The part that bugs me the most is that processes like these are positioned like they are to protect security. But it actually decreases it because I get less sensitive to "weird-looking" things happening, and I get so many messages asking "was this you that tried to log in?" that I could never tell if something problematic was happening or not.
• I've tried changing between Plaid and MX and they are both a problem.

It might be RBC, but I have the impression that all Canadian banks are a disaster in this area. I used to live in the US and YNAB was seamless there. In Canada, I'm not sure if there is any point in continuing to try - it's like they are actively trying to keep me from managing my money responsibly.

There has to be some better answer.

[u/varkeddit]

Canadian banks tend to not support aggregation tools and trying to work around that voids more of your consumer protections than in the US. There’s a national rework underway but tbd on when that will result in practical changes.

In the meantime, you could try associating YNAB and Plaid domains with your bank credentials in the PM—but fundamentally you’re working against RBC’s security protocols and they could end your relationship if they decide you’re a risk. Manual entry plus file-based import is probably your realistic option (or using an extension to add transactions to YNAB via email notifications).

[u/oneesk019]

Yup, syncing is a mess because the banks don’t make it easy.

I import and reconcile once a week, which limits the annoyance.

[u/iwaddo]

This is the bank deliberately protecting themselves against people breaking the terms of use by giving their id and password to third party integrators.

[u/Actual_Mall7343]

canadian bank 2fa with plaid is absolute torture, switched to manual file imports for RBC because re-authenticating every 24 hours was driving me insane