Quicken not syncing with PayPal

Hugo Stiglitz

Since PayPal changed their landing page about a month ago, I've had nothing but problems syncing with Quicken. Quicken support blames PayPal, PayPal blames Quicken. Frankly I think it's a PayPal issue as none of my other accounts are having issues.  In any case it's causing a sever time burden on me. It seems like this happens every couple of years - why can't two of the biggest consumer financial products get their act together? It was at least reading the correct online balance and updating every couple of days, now it's not even doing that. 

jacobs

Quicken, through Intuit which provides the connectivity services, has three methods of connectivity. Financial institutions have the choice of which ones to support, and in some cases, there is a fee which must be paid to Intuit. If PayPal has their own unique API, Quicken (Intuit) isn't going to write custom code just to use the PayPal API; imagine what a nightmare it would quickly become if they stated using different connectivity code for lots of financial institutions. (Now, Quicken did pioneer a new API-based connectivity approach with Capital One late last year, and apparently hopes to advance that technology with other financial institutions going forward; I have no idea if the Quicken API approach is at all compatible with PayPal's API.) 

jacobs

Financial institutions are constantly changing their websites and online services, for behind-the-scenes security reasons as well as enhancing services and simply changing aesthetics. Quicken connects to more than 14,000 of 'em, and that makes keeping them all working a never-ending challenge. Go to the home page and scroll though a page or two of topics and see how many deal with connectivity issues; it's just unfortunate that the financial services industry never came together to adopt a single standard everyone could utilize effectively. In this case, the fact that your problems began when PayPal changed their website pretty clearly points to where the blame falls. But it's still Quicken's job to play catch-up and make it work. (It's made tougher by the fact that connectivity services is contracted out to Intuit to run, so there are even more players involved when something is broken.)

If you can make time for it, contacting Quicken Support will allow them to verify the problem by viewing your computer and then escalate it to the connectivity team -- or confirm to you that this is a known problem if that's the case.

Hugo Stiglitz

Update, Here is what PayPal said:  The issue you are describing is an issue that I encounter fairly regularly, so I am not unfamiliar with the situation. PayPal has APIs available to be able to download transactions in a more fluid manner, but Intuit has chosen not to opt for this path. This would allow PayPal to provide some type of support for the sync. As it stands, the sync is entirely handled by Intuit's proprietary Express Web Connect. I've included a link below: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank

Hugo Stiglitz

So why doesn't intuit/quicken use the PayPal APIs?

jacobs

Quicken, through Intuit which provides the connectivity services, has three methods of connectivity. Financial institutions have the choice of which ones to support, and in some cases, there is a fee which must be paid to Intuit. If PayPal has their own unique API, Quicken (Intuit) isn't going to write custom code just to use the PayPal API; imagine what a nightmare it would quickly become if they stated using different connectivity code for lots of financial institutions. (Now, Quicken did pioneer a new API-based connectivity approach with Capital One late last year, and apparently hopes to advance that technology with other financial institutions going forward; I have no idea if the Quicken API approach is at all compatible with PayPal's API.)