Bank Of America and TD Bank requesting 2 factor authentication

CliffD

With guidance from Quicken support, I deactivate my various connections to Bank of America and TD Bank and used the Add Account function to reconnect using Express Web Connect to "Bank of America Quicken" and "TD Bank Online Banking - New". Now everytime I run One Step Update, I receive prompts to send a Code to my phone. How can I turn this function off? In the past, I could run One Step Update using saved passwords and not get challenged with this additional validation step.

Frankx

Hi @CliffD,

Before you changed your connections for these two banks (based on guidance from support) what were the connection types?  I suspect that you may have been using Direct Connect, rather than Express Web Connect.  If that is the case, I believe that it is likely the cause of your current complaint. 

What problems were you having that caused you to contact Q Support?  You could try switching back to Direct Connect, but that could also be problematic for two reasons.  First, it could cause whatever problems you had recently to return (this is pure speculation, since you didn't say what problems you were having.  And second, specifically for the BofA connection, because that bank has grandfathered old Quicken customers who use Direct Connect, but is not allowing any new connections using Direct Connect.  On that issue - you might want to take a look at this recent message thread here in the Community LINK.

Frankx

CliffD

Hi FrankX, I had contacted Quicken because I had some corruption issues. Particularly, I had a few online bills that had hundreds of repeats on the same day. We ended up restoring a backup from a couple of months ago. I think that version had a smaller issue and we removed and recreated connections. She said that BofA had problems with Direct Connect and, since I don't submit payment instructions from Quicken to the bank, I agreed to switch to Express Web Connect.

Chris_QPW

The one big difference between Direct Connect and Express Web Connect is that Direct Connect has its own security model and protocol (OFX), whereas Express Web Connect is logging in as you on their website.  Basically that means that with Direct Connect there isn't any 2 factor authentication like there is for the website/Express Web Connect.

How often to prompt for 2 factor authentication is up to the financial institution.

EDIT just to clarify.  Direct Connect connects to a OFX server at the the financial institution, it doesn't log into the website.

BK

FYI all, my BofA connection is EWC (didn't get grandfathered for DC).  I do have 2FA enabled on their website with 'remember this device'.  But I do not have to enter the code in Quicken except for the very first time.  There are many posts here about inconsistency of 2FAs (including BofA) where some of us Quicken users are asked only once while others are asked every time in order to download transactions.  My WAG is that those inconsistencies started since the inclusion of the QCS connection channel into QWin in ~summer of 2020.  There is another [unresolved] 2FA BofA post from 2020 that is similar to this but I cannot find or recall the details since Q seems to limit my bookmark history to last Nov.  I am sure this is very frustrating to @CliffD .

Frankx

Hi @CliffD

Thanks for the additional information on BOA.  While I will admit that the Q Support folks have more data on problems with specific financial institutions that we users do, Express Web connections are not - in my view - nearly as reliable as direct connect.

That being said, now that you've changed the connection type for BOA, unless that happened within the last few days, the bank likely will not allow you to revert to the direct connect method (they have only allowed direct connect for grandfathered accounts for several years now).  So you should sign-in to the BOA website and go to the "Security Center" tab and make sure that the "Extra Security at sign in" setting is set to "Turn off".  That should take care of BOA.

For TD Bank, you may be able to change that connection type to Direct Connect, and if you can do that, I would suggest that you do so because it is a more reliable connection.  But there is also the possibility that TD Bank has the same type of "opt out" feature on their website that I just talked about for BOA above, so you may want to visit their website to look for that, instead of changing the connection type.

Let me know how things go.

Frankx

BK

Hi @CliffD ,  I just saw this recent BofA post in this link.  Look at this comment and see if it helps your situation - where @bgrodski wrote on Aug 20 at 9:17AM:

I switched my wife's new B of A credit card from "Bank of America Credit Card" to "Bank of America - All other states" and it now works fine. No more 2FA code requests when running One Step Update on Quicken...

Beijing Mac

I am continuing to get the 2FA requests when trying to update my wife's credit card with Bank of America.  This is a fairly new CC and am pretty sure it is set up as express connect.  it is set up as the "all other states" option.  very frustrating.  will it eventually go away or how to have this quit asking?