Truist Confirms Quicken Direct Connect Option - but there's a problem

REJones

Received a letter from Truist regarding Quicken Direct Connect (DC): On or about 20 Feb, SunTrust systems will transition to Truist. After this transition, DC will be part of Truist online banking, and will require you to sign in to Truist online banking or create a Truist online banking profile to establish DC service. However, the letter goes on to say: If you use DC to pay bills, you may lose the ability to pay bills thru Quicken/Quickbooks with DC, but other bill pay options are available via truist.com/digital-upgrade.

UPDATE: Just noticed today in Quicken that I'm no longer able to make bill payments thru Quicken Express Web Connect/Truist. My Online Payees list is still accessible in Quicken, but now there's no option to set up a bill payment using Quicken and send that bill payment instruction to Truist. What a mess this has become.

Tom Young

As far as I know you've never been able to establish bill payments at your bank through Quicken using EWC since the communications between Quicken and the bank are entirely one-way, from the bank to Quicken.  "With Direct Connect, Quicken can even talk back (for bill pay, money transfers, etc.)." 

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank

Right now Truist uses EWC:

68775    68775    68775    Truist Bank    https://www.truist.com/    NA    https://dias.bank.truist.com/ui/login    ACTIVE                   BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT    NOT_QBP    NA

thompson87

Suntrust customer here. I received the letter also, but the link to http://www.truist.com/digital-upgrade goes to a page "Hmm. That didn’t work… We can’t find the page you’re looking for. " Furthermore, today (Feb 6, 2022) I can't login to my Truist web account, and attempts to reach support for online banking tell me to call back during business hours. (Suntrust always had 24 hour support.) A search of the Truist website suggests they will be charging $7.95 per month for Direct Connect support -- something I've gotten for free from Suntrust for years. So much for a digital "upgrade." Suntrust Direct Connect still seems to work, but I'm wondering what happens to payments I've scheduled to take place after Feb 19.

REJones

Thanks Tom - I do believe your are correct: no bill pay with EWC, although a member of Truist's Digital Banking Support Team told me 2 weeks ago that it would work. Last week, using EWC, I set up two regular bill payments on Quicken for a future date, and the process worked just as it always did before with the Direct Connect set up I had with SunTrust. However, today using EWC, it does not even give me the option for bill pay - as you have confirmed.

titanrx

Yup, as soon as I saw the letter I tried the link they provided. Doesn't work. This isn't a good omen for the SunTrust takeover. I have used SunTrust + Quicken to pay over 10,000 bills over the last 28 years (at no monthly fee). If Truist can't make this happen seamlessly and without a fee, I am gone. I'll experiment with using my Fidelity brokerage if it can work with BillPay.

Do I recall correctly that Quicken Premium which I use also has a BillPay capability at no monthly fee?

jbooth3

Here is the location of the referenced link: https://www.truist.com/content/dam/truist/us/en/documents/internal/olb/QRG-OLB-DirectConnectReenroll.pdf
Of course, the links in this 38-page pdf don't work either.

dc0063

Spoke with Suntrust Online Digital Support - direct connect bill pay will not be available after Feb 21. It may return sometime later in the year, like fall, but not at this time.
Does this affect quicken bill manager?

JenniferW

I've been paying $9.95 per month to manage three accounts via Direct Connect on SunTrust. It's an automatic charge from SunTrust, that I'm now wondering how to get rid of? I logged onto the Truist website and all I can say is, thanks to all of you here for providing these links as I haven't been able to find squat about how this is - or is not - going to work on their website.

REJones

At this point, I have no confidence that Truist's official transition will be successful this coming weekend when they pull the plug at SunTrust. Truist has said we may not be able to access our accounts during this time, and who knows if/when their Direct Connect service will be activated.
So, I recently joined a nearby credit union that offers Direct Connect for free, and have transferred $$ into a new checking acct. Just waiting for the funds to clear, then I'll test their Direct Connect service for bill pay with Quicken. Hopefully it will work as smoothly as it did for the past 20+ years with SunTrust.

JenniferW

I just tried the instructions that jbooth3 helpfully included above. As mentioned, this is a 38-page document. On page 2, they provide instructions to deactivate the current account. I tried this in Quicken for one account and after going through the prompts received a notice that I needed to call my financial institution before I could deactivate. Then my system and Quicken completely hung. <sigh> I'm going to wait and see what happens this weekend. If stuff just quits working, so be it. I will go on line to setup payments, etc. What an epic fail.

titanrx

So, in addition to having a convoluted transition procedure which should have been invisible to the customers and charging $9.95 per month (SunTrust was free), the policies for delivery dates and account float are worse than SunTrust too. See attached.

I hope that Truist loses every SunTrust Direct Connect customer. I'll be checking into the 2 other banks in this region which offer free Direct Connect Payments.

joebuckfromTX

> @titanrx said:
> So, in addition to having a convoluted transition procedure which should have been invisible to the customers and charging $9.95 per month (SunTrust was free), the policies for delivery dates and account float are worse than SunTrust too. See attached.
>
> I hope that Truist loses every SunTrust Direct Connect customer. I'll be checking into the 2 other banks in this region which offer free Direct Connect Payments.

I'm in the southeast. What other banks did you find?

joebuckfromTX

Does anyone know if we can still download transactions in the meantime? I'll be looking to bank elsewhere

REJones

Joe - My current Quicken-Truist link is Express Web Connect. This morning I downloaded recent transactions into my Quicken register.

titanrx

> @joebuckfromTX said:
>
> I'm in the southeast. What other banks did you find?

Also in the SE. I'm looking at PNC and Regions. Both of their websites show that they support Direct Connect and Payment with Quicken. They also show up in the Quicken fidir.txt file indicating that they are Direct&Payment. I am calling them today to verify if the info is accurate and if there is a no-fee way of using the service.

REJones

Joe - I don't know about Regions, but my recent search into PNC indicated that they offer Direct Connect for business accounts only.

Chris_QPW

REJones said:

Joe - I don't know about Regions, but my recent search into PNC indicated that they offer Direct Connect for business accounts only.

That isn't true.  Even though I don't use PNC just looking at the posted on here I know that PNC provides Direct Connect for non-business accounts.

I just found this on their site:
https://www.pnc.com/content/dam/pnc-com/pdf/smallbusiness/Quicken_QuickBooks-Direct-Connect-Service-Agreement.pdf

REJones

Chris - Thanks for this important correction. I previously did a search on Direct Connect on the PNC site, and the only thing that came up was about Direct Connect for business accounts.

titanrx

I was at PNC this morning and signed up for a new checking account. The 800 support number and the local banker both assured that they support Direct Connect and Payment at no charge for consumer accounts. I'll be logging in later today and setting up some test payments (non-time critical payments).

As i posted in another thread, the Quicken fidir.txt file listed both PNC and Regions as Direct Connect and Bill Pay compatible. Now we'll see if the real world matches the specs.

Hedgewick

TRUIST did not wait until 2-19 to terminate Direct Connect. They no longer support it as of about a week ago. I had been using TRUIST to pay bills via Quicken. This is no longer possible, and it won't be in the future.

REJones

Hi titanrx - I also signed up with PNC yesterday for Direct Connect and bill pay - thanks to the helpful tips from members here. All looked fine in Quicken, but soon into the set up I hit a wall blocking my use of DC with bill pay. After a couple of phone calls, I was informed that PNC will mail out a PIN for using DC with bank bill pay, and this mail will take 4-7 business days to arrive in two separate envelopes. Til then I'll use online bill pay with another bank; it's not as quick but gets the job done.

titanrx

> @REJones said:
> Hi titanrx - I also signed up with PNC yesterday for Direct Connect and bill pay - thanks to the helpful tips from members here. All looked fine in Quicken, but soon into the set up I hit a wall blocking my use of DC with bill pay. After a couple of phone calls, I was informed that PNC will mail out a PIN for using DC with bank bill pay, and this mail will take 4-7 business days to arrive in two separate envelopes. Til then I'll use online bill pay with another bank; it's not as quick but gets the job done.

Same here. I was able to connect Quicken to PNC with Direct and Bill Manager but not Payment. There was a Quicken message on the PNC connection popup that the financial institution offers a more advanced connect type (i knew it was referring to Payment) but when I tried to use my new credentials they didn't work. So I called the number for support that Quicken provided. PNC's 1st level support bumped me up to 3rd level support immediately and they enrolled me for Payment and are sending the required credentials through snail mail. Would have liked to get things rolling quicker, but after the support call, I'm more confident that this will accomplish what I need.

BTW, if you read the fine print for the PNC, their Payment processor for Quicken is Fiserv which is the same processor that SunTrust has used for decades. I'm guessing that Truist uses some other processor.

2nd BTW, SunTrust/Truist didn't wait for the weekend to stop processing Quicken Payments. I wanted to get a few payments queued up before the cutoff and Quicken couldn't connect at all. Not even WebConnect which Truist is supposed to support.

rjrabon

First Horizon has always worked fine, and it still does (I just used it to send a check to make sure), AND it is free. Moving my checking activities there. I've been a client of SunTrust for over 35 years, but this move was stupid and in no way is in my best interests.

Manoba

As of today, I can not direct connect Truist from QBM. That's terrible because I have 4 accounts.

Larry Hochman

Looks like there are a lot of people with a lot of experience on this subject.

Can anyone tell me if the payments I already scheduled will be going out?

I have one bill set in the register to pay by 2/28, one for 3/2, and several for my HOA dues with dates of 3/27, 6/27 and 9/27. All have Check #s showing in the register.

Can I expect these to go out? or should I void? Obviously, I am more concerned with the ones for 2/28 and 3/2.

Thanks is advance!

[Removed-Disruptive]

titanrx

> @"Larry Hochman" said:
> Looks like there are a lot of people with a lot of experience on this subject.
>
> Can anyone tell me if the payments I already scheduled will be going out?
>
> I have one bill set in the register to pay by 2/28, one for 3/2, and several for my HOA dues with dates of 3/27, 6/27 and 9/27. All have Check #s showing in the register.
>
> Can I expect these to go out? or should I void? Obviously, I am more concerned with the ones for 2/28 and 3/2.
>
> Thanks is advance!
>
> [Removed-Disruptive]

I wouldn't count on them going out although in the past, having the SunTrust assigned number in your Quicken register obligated them to an on-time payment. Unfortunately, the SunTrust web site has never shown future scheduled Quicken Bill Pays. You'll have to call SunTrust online support to verify whether your payments will happen. I stopped entering payments into Quicken a week before the cutoff and logged into their website and manually entered payees and payments.

I signed up at PNC and just waiting for my Quicken Bill Pay credentials to arrive in the snail mail. Adios SunTrust/Truist.

kapinossa

I talked to Suntrust PC banking on Friday afternoon about existing payment requests.

I had three payments going out this week with electronic check numbers set on Feb 6. All three were canceled without any feedback.

I had one paper payment due on 2/25/22, they said it was in processing to be mail by that day to make the 25th deadline.

Bottom line, all payments that will be executed on last Friday or later have been auto canceled with no feedback to me.

I consider this unacceptable since they had two years to figure it out.

I spent 7.5 hours on the phone trying to get their Truist direct connect to work. When you call in you get BB&T REPS in Digital Support Team that are not at all familiar with Suntrust PC banking. Currently, unable to use Truist Diect Connect to repay these bills and had to use their Bill Pay feature of online access. Supposedly working on a fix on way numerous people can not use their new Direct Connect subscription that I signed up for this morning.

It is very difficult to find help since nobody on the other end of the Bank phone knows anything about Quicken other than directing you to call Quicken to fix something that Quicken can not fix.

Quicken has been swamped with calls today for the bank change that they have no part in breaking or fixing.

I am hoping the master ticket comes up with a fix within 48 hours since it appears to me that Truist is using the BB&T On-Line Direct Connect feature to service the Suntrust change over accounts.

Larry Hochman

Is anyone else annoyed that Direct Connect was free from Sun Trust and now Truist wants to charge $7.95 per month?

Or is that just the type of account that I had with Sun Trust and now have with Truist?

I was holding on Truist chat for over 2 hours and no one ever connected.

AAR

This morning, after multiple tries over the weekend, I was able to connect Quicken to the BB&T Direct Connect per the 38-page PDF.

I have sent my first test payment, got an email from Truist confirming the payment was started, at least for me, Truist (BB&T DC) did not issue a check number in the register, will know next week if it is working properly.

Rick Staveley

> Looks like there are a lot of people with a lot of experience on this subject.
>
> Can anyone tell me if the payments I already scheduled will be going out?
>
> I have one bill set in the register to pay by 2/28, one for 3/2, and several for my HOA dues with dates of 3/27, 6/27 and 9/27. All have Check #s showing in the register.
>
> Can I expect these to go out? or should I void? Obviously, I am more concerned with the ones for 2/28 and 3/2.
>
> Thanks is advance!
>
> [Removed-Disruptive]

I am in the same situation and don't know of any way to cancel previously scheduled payments since I can no longer use Direct Connect. Another post here indicated payments were cancelled automatically without notice, but no way to confirm that is for everyone, a one-off situation or some subset of users. As far as I am concerned, Truist has an obligation to process those scheduled payments or at a minimum notify us they need to be cancelled. But that doesn't mean they will do either. Looking into other banks after 30+ years with SunTrust. Really annoyed I need to spend time researching problems created by Truist.

kapinossa

After a full day of failures yesterday trying to get my Suntrust PC Banking / Quicken to transition to Truist (or is it really BB&T Online Banking), I was successful making a Direct Connection to the Bank (not Truist but BB&T Online). All is better today since they had an system wide problem yesterday and I was placed on a master ticket problem. After reading AAR comment, I tried again with the 38 page PDF file and it worked. Now my connection is displayed as Direct Connect instead of Express Web Connect. That is the good news.

Now I wanted to try to send a test payment via a check to my wife. There is NO DROP DOWN in the register field for "Send Payment". It was there before the transition from Suntrust! AAR how did you enter a payment into your register or did you have to set up Bill Pay which is an Quicken feature now?

Any help would be appreciated. I have used Quicken with Suntrust PC Banking for many many years and I am a little confused right now.