Citi fails to validate as an online bill

virbert

Citi has been failing to successfully establish itself as an online bill for about two weeks now. The symptoms are that the Citi bill immediately complains about needing attention when adding it as a biller and Validate Online billers come back as failed, removing the biller from the online list. Is there something going on with Citi?

Quicken Anja

Hello @virbert,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community to tell us about your issue, though I apologize that you are experiencing this.

Unfortunately, this is a known issue with Citi Online biller that has been reported, and we have opened an escalation ticket with our service provider for this issue. While the investigation remains ongoing, please, refer to this open Community Alert for updates.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Quicken Anja

Hello @virbert,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community to tell us about your issue, though I apologize that you are experiencing this.

Unfortunately, this is a known issue with Citi Online biller that has been reported, and we have opened an escalation ticket with our service provider for this issue. While the investigation remains ongoing, please, refer to this open Community Alert for updates.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

UKR

Avoid late fees and penalty interest rates!

If you're about to be late with making your payment, I recommend you logon directly to the biller's website and authorize them to direct debit the next (and all future) payments from your checking account or a credit card. The biller will make an electronic debit on the due date and you don't have to worry about being late. Just record a scheduled reminder that is not an online payment into your account register on or before the Due Date and before you download transactions from the bank or credit card containing the debit transaction. That will allow Quicken to match your register transaction to the downloaded data and not cause any further issues.

virbert

Hello @Quicken_Tyka,
Can you tell me if this issue is still being looked into? It is different from the current Citi alert. (https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7891092/ongoing-4-14-2021-citibank-error-cc-501-101-502-102-505-105#latest). The alert @Quicken Anja linked in her response above appears to have a permission problem. (https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7883626/ongoing-1-13-21-citi-biller-experiencing-an-error#latest)

taffeys

Hello @virbert,

Mods here seem to be avoiding you, me, and others here about this issue for a long time. I have been able to fix this by following the suggestions here (https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7891385/when-will-the-costco-citi-visa-download-issue-be-resolved#latest).

Good luck

virbert

Hi @taffeys,

Thank you for your help. I made the changes suggested in the thread which you linked, and those provoked a download of charges. So the One Step Update on my Citi account should continue to work. The problem which prompted me to write the original question was that I am not able to set up Citi as an online biller. It fails the validate online biller check and, sadly, continues to do so after these changes.

Thanks again for your help. It is very appreciated.

UKR

virbert said:

Hi @taffeys,

Thank you for your help. I made the changes suggested in the thread which you linked, and those provoked a download of charges. So the One Step Update on my Citi account should continue to work. The problem which prompted me to write the original question was that I am not able to set up Citi as an online biller. It fails the validate online biller check and, sadly, continues to do so after these changes.

Thanks again for your help. It is very appreciated.

If I may repeat my earlier response ... if you're unable to set up a credit card payment using Quicken Bill Manager, stop fighting this windmill. Logon directly to the credit card website and authorize the credit card company to direct debit your payment from your checking account on the next due date. You can also make this a repeat event and allow the credit card bill to be deducted from checking every month, automatically.
In Quicken all you need is a regular scheduled reminder, not an online bill, to do the same action, every month a couple of days before due date.

taffeys

@virbert

Something changed with Citi and I had the same problem with getting Citi back as an online biller. I had to unlink Citi and change it to "Citi Cards".

What's more you have to authorize Quicken access on the Citi Cards website:
Select the Profile -> More Settings -> Manage Desktop Apps

It took me several tries before Citi Cards allowed Quicken to access my Citi Cards account.

taffeys

To be clear I have been talking about Citi being setup as an online biller, not as an online payment. A reminder does not tell you what the payment amount will be if it not a fixed amount. Quicken should be able to do this with Citi, just like it does with all our other credit card accounts. I have Citi setup with 2FA and Quicken knows how to deal with that also. In my opinion, while these problems are Quicken's responsibility they are not Quicken's fault since they contract with Intuit for this interface with financial institutions.

virbert

@UKR ,

Thank you for your response. Your advice about setting up direct debit from my bank account for payment is solid advice which was given to me long ago and has helped me stay current with all of my bills. In my opinion, it is advice you should continue to pass on to whomever. I appreciate your help.

virbert

Hello @taffeys,

Thank you for your follow-ups. I am definitely trying to re-establish Citi as an online biller. I have edited the Quicken account and changed the Financial Institution to Citi Cards. I logged into the Citi Web site and navigated to Manage Desktop Apps. I found that I had registered in August 2019. I tried to Add Access again which started a 10-minute countdown timer. I proceeded to add Citi as an Online Biller without success observing the same outcome.

Since I was troubleshooting anyway, I created a new Quicken data file and established checking accounts before trying to establish Citi as an online biller. I found adding Citi as an online biller failed in the same way as it does with my daily file. This test establishes that it is not my file and that Quicken is having a problem with Citi. I can't be the only one having this issue. At this point, I am not sure what step to take next.

Thank you again for all your help. It is very appreciated by me.

virbert

Hello @taffeys,

I apologize for the spam, but I wanted to let you know I decided to call Quicken support regarding this issue. Support told me that there is an issue with Citi Cards, and you are not expected to be able to add Citi as an online biller at this time. If you can, great; but it is not the expectation. No ETA was given for a fix.

taffeys

Hi @virbert

Interesting. I just logged on to Quicken and went to the Bills & Income tab. Citi Visa Card showed as Locked & a Try Again button. So I clicked on the button and a popup appeared asking for Username, Password, and Pass Code. Then I received a text on my phone giving me a 2FA Citi ID Code #. I entered the Username, Password, and 2FA code # and Quicken validated it. Then a popup appeared with the minimum and total payment amounts for the account. Since I had previously already entered the payment I clicked OK and the bill went to "Awaiting next bill".

Quicken Deluxe Version R32.14 Build 27.1.32.12
Windows 10 Pro x64 Dev Build 21370.1 Feature Pack 321.9601.0.3 4/‎30/‎2021

virbert

Hello @taffeys,

This will be the last update for the time being. After reading your latest post, I was going to test two-factor authorization. But to my surprise, I found that I was able to successfully add Citi as an online biller during my first step concerned with making sure it fails before messing with settings on the Citi Web site. As was the case for all other times, Citi came back in the "Needs Attention" state after attempting to add it as a biller. I have trained myself to go ahead and test to see if the addition is valid by validating it (Gear->Validating online billers). But instead, this time I clicked on the Try Again button (as you did), and it worked. In the end, I think changing the financial institution to Citi Cards did the trick as there is really nothing else that I changed as I had already given Quicken access to Citi a long time ago. It was probably working yesterday. I never went the extra step of clicking the Try Again button to finish the setup.

taffeys

Hello @virbert,

That's great news! It is sad that Quicken Support is clueless about this.

james Franke

Maybe I missed it in the thread but I went to Citi website and did the manage apps. Reeset in to my Citi account and then reset the Citi in Bills and Income. All good.