Bank of America Bill Pay discontinued?

Ps56k2

rgintampa said: I know that there is a perception that this change is due to BofA but I suspect it is with Quicken. This helps sell QBM as a revenue source.

let's see....
JPMorgan Chase & Co

328.24 billion  USD

Market capitalization

Bank of America Corp

254.88 billion  USD

Market capitalization

LesFromIL

Quicken has now become totally useless to me at this point. Manually entering scheduled transactions in a pain and error prone and makes it difficult to look ahead to get an idea of account balances and upcoming payments. This may be the last straw for Quicken.

Ps56k2

LesFromIL said: Quicken has now become totally useless to me at this point.

I have reverted to my 2-step process....
1 - Setup a Quicken Reminder, and then enter it after I receive the bill - view the Calendar for a look ahead.
2 - Setup the Payees within my bank Bill Payment feature - and then pay the bill after entering over on Quicken

Dean2

I use the same 2 step process as Les does. With BofA I can also enter recurring payments for amounts that are fixed. It is not necessary to put a placeholder in Quicken, but it does provide a look-ahead to ensure sufficient funds. It is still not clear why the change to EWC+ was needed. My guess is that BofA (a $255b company) saw a security liability in providing Quicken (a bit player) with user BofA account login credentials.

schabelf

I am always suspicious of big business and in this case I don't know which big business to blame. All I know is that if Quicken doesn't fix this mess they will loose my subscription fee. It was very convenient to set up bill pay payment through Quicken but I have already become accustomed to setting them up in the BOA phone app. What is not acceptable is Quicken not showing the complete financial situation of an account after having downloaded current info from the bank. Quicken used to show scheduled payments and the bottom of the register with a dividing line above. The bottom total in the register was the amount that would be left in your account when all scheduled bills were paid, an important number to know. The final number in the register above the line was the current amount of money in the account, another important number to know. At present I have to go to the app or the bank website to see the total of outstanding pending bills so I know where I stand. This information needs to be in Quicken. If it is not then I don't need Quicken.

Ps56k2

schabelf said:  All I know is that if Quicken doesn't fix this mess they will loose my subscription fee.

it's not for Quicken to fix - they can't show you data that is NOT being kept or downloaded from the bank

CAnTX

Quicken customer since the MS DOS days, I've actually changed banks TWICE in the past to be with one that supported quickens payments. Now Quicken is pulling the rug out, I'm finally going to leave, this was the PRIMARY reason I stayed, it was the primary reason I agreed to pay an annual subscription...now they are being greedy.

Greg_the_Geek

Why are you going to leave Quicken when it's the financial institution's decision to drop Direct Connect for EWC+? 

Chris_QPW

CAnTX said:

Quicken customer since the MS DOS days, I've actually changed banks TWICE in the past to be with one that supported quickens payments. Now Quicken is pulling the rug out, I'm finally going to leave, this was the PRIMARY reason I stayed, it was the primary reason I agreed to pay an annual subscription...now they are being greedy.

Quicken Inc gets nothing extra out of this deal.  In fact, they are giving away more usage of the Quicken Bill Manager (which I don't recommend because I don't think it is reliable) to try to compensate.

The benefits are really for the financial institutions that can get rid of a service that costs them money for a small percentage of users, and in the process consolidate the "aggregators" to all use the same protocol.  And to have a more secure system.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7922729/my-explanation-of-the-security-of-the-different-connection-types

DSperber

> @Chris_QPW said:

> As for finding financial institutions that still support bill pay through Direct Connect search this list for PAYMENT.
> https://ofx-prod-filist.intuit.com/qw2800/data/fidir.txt  

I don't see how to make use of this TXT file. Has it been updated to reflect the disappearance of Direct Connect for "BofA - All Other States" (for example)?
What exactly am I looking for next to that PAYMENT that will tell me whether that financial institution DOES support Bill Payment (initiated from within Quicken) via Direct Connect, or not?

So, for example, that "BofA - All Other States" row in the file shows:
BANKING,CREDIT,PAYMENT&DIRECT BANKING,CREDIT&WEB-CONNECT BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT NOT_QBP NA

What does that mean?? Is it actually current, or is it now out of date? We know that Direct Connect is no longer in effect, so "PAYMENT&DIRECT" surely seems inaccurate.

Is there a more current version that makes mention of "WEB-CONNECT-PLUS" or something like that?

Chris_QPW

@DSperber It looks like they haven't updated the fidir.txt file.  I checked to local one at C:\ProgramData\Quicken\Inet\Common\Localweb\Banklist\2019 and it is the same.

BANKING,CREDIT,PAYMENT&DIRECT this states Direct Connect for banking and credit card accounts and bill payment.

This is for Express Connect, there isn't a separate indication for Express Web Connect + they are combined into the same settings in the file.
BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT

It is really ironic that updating a simple file seems to be too much for Intuit to handle.  Or maybe they don't care anymore because Quicken is using a different source to find out what is supported.

That would be a pretty big change in the way they do it (and will make it harder for users decide on what is actually supported), but it certainly looks that way.
I just tried Add Account with "Bank of America-All Other states and the "Advanced Options" come up and this what it shows.


Note that if I select "Bank of America - Quicken" there isn't any Advanced Options and selecting Next takes you directly to this dialog:


Looking at the "Bank of America - Quicken" entry in the fidir.txt file it has this line:

BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT	NOT_QBP	NA

Not only doesn't it have Direct Connect, it is also missing Web Connect (downloading of the QFX file), which is in the All Other States listing.
CREDIT&WEB-CONNECT

Rudol

I'm so sick of this BofA/Quicken fiasco. I'm referring to the need to use EWC+ connection vs the old reliable Direct Connect. You now can't pay your bills through Quicken so the BofA can process the payments. I finally changed my BofA account in favor of a Wells Fargo account. I found that you can still pay your bills through Quicken but there are still downsides. I found out that when you pay your bills through Quicken, they (Quicken) use a third-party servicing company to actually process the payments. That third-party service merely withdraws the requisite amount from your Wells Fargo account to pay the bill. When you go to the Wells Fargo website and log into your account, you will not see your payment as a scheduled event. This is because Wells Fargo doesn't have anything to do with the processing of the bill; they are only the repository for your funds that releases the amount to the third-party processor. You will only see your payment in both Quicken and Wells Fargo when the bill has actually been paid. On the upside, you can still pay your bills via Quicken but you must use your Quicken register to keep track of your scheduled payments for purposes of forward planning of expenditures to avoid over-drafting on your account. This is the best I can do for now. Hope this helps others out there. It doesn't look like Quicken is going to release any current listing of Banks that still use Bill Pay via Direct Connect. They obviously know this information since they are the primary in their relationships with the banks. The Wells Fargo rep stated that he thinks that Wells Fargo will eventually be following BofA's lead in no longer offering Bill Pay through Quicken; he didn't have any guesses though on the time frame; this seems to be the trend. Does anybody know of any other good alternative software out there rather than using Quicken for handling your financial transactions?

Jon

Once again, the problem here isn't Quicken, it's the banks. Banks that are discontinuing Direct Connect support for Quicken aren't singling out Quicken, they don't provide those features for any other programs either. So switching from Quicken to some other program isn't going to magically fix this for you - you're going to have the same issues.

I agree that it would be nice if there was an easier way to determine which banks supported Direct Connect, but I've pretty much given up on it for banking. All my credit cards & brokerage accounts still support it, none of my bank accounts do. But I only use banks for savings accounts these days and those have a pretty low level of activity so I don't really miss Direct Connect very much; I just have to manually enter the interest at the end of the month/quarter.

Mark1104

@Rudol @Jon - the change to EWC+ is being driven by issues of security.  That is it.  All the banks will probably migrate over time as the regulators check that what one bank is doing another bank also does.  

What I don't understand is why not just use the Bank's Bill pay program - or alternatively, get away from Billpay by using all the other approaches to paying bills that have proliferated over time: Credit Cards at the Biller's website, Auto-Debit, Zelle, etc. 

BillPay is simply "old technology" that is slowly fading away as it simply a form of checkwriting; credit/ debit card, auto-debit, Zelle are electronic methods that don't create a paper check.  

Jon

I do use Fidelity's bill pay.  And I do pay most of my bills with credit cards but then you've got to pay the credit cards. And a few bills charge an extra fee to pay by card, or can't be paid online at all, so I don't use the card for those either.

Mark1104

@Jon - but can't you pay the credit card directly at the issuer's website using your routing number / checking account number or the debit card?  that way the charge is direct to the checking account and avoids Bill Pay. If the cash is coming directly from Fidelity, I can see the complexity. 

My broader point is these days most billers have a way to pay them without sending them a check, whether that is a credit card, a debit card, auto-debit to your checking account, Zelle, PayPal, etc. Checks are just a dying method of payment and hence, so is BillPay, 

DSperber

> @Mark1104 said:
> What I don't understand is why not just use the Bank's Bill pay program - or alternatively, get away from Billpay by using all the other approaches to paying bills that have proliferated over time: Credit Cards at the Biller's website, Auto-Debit, Zelle, etc. 
>
> BillPay is simply "old technology" that is slowly fading away as it simply a form of checkwriting; credit/ debit card, auto-debit, Zelle are electronic methods that don't create a paper check.  

Of course there are alternative methods of performing the electronic online bill payment, as you enumerate. That isn't the point. The convenience for the user of being able to initiate online bill payments from the Quicken side (when Direct Connect was operative) is a real convenience, but it's not difficult to initiate online bill payments using the bank's system.

However the real point is that Quicken is also needed TO MAINTAIN YOUR REGISTER. It's one thing to get downloaded transactions into Quicken on the night that they clear the bank. But for all of the pre-time, before the future-dated scheduled payment actually gets paid, that you'd probably like to see that future-dated payment in your register for planning purposes. That way you would know if/when you absolutely must make a deposit in order to prevent overdraft, etc.

And the automatic entry of future-dated register entries for these online bill payments initiated via Quicken is how it used to work with Direct Connect. No longer works that way with EWC+.

Now it is true that you can set up a "bill/reminder" in Quicken to correspond to the REPEATING ONLINE payments you've got set up with your bank. These WILL be placed into the register automatically, with their future-dated payment date, in advance of that actual future date when they pay and clear and get downloaded as transactions that night. So at least fo REPEATING ONLINE payments the functionality loss from EWC+ can be overcome, with the Quicken register automatically maintained through this "bill/reminder" functionality.

However for ONE-OFF (i.e. non-repeating) online bill payments that you use your bank's bill payment system to pay, there still is no automatic pre-entry into Quicken in any way, shape, or form, of that future-dated one-off payment. You yourself must manually do the entry into your Quicken register (assuming you want to), in order to have that upcoming preview (for planning) for your future-dated one-off payment, for all the time in advance of its actual pay date.

Ideally if the bank would send down a "uncleared one-off future-dated transaction" on the night that you create that one-off future-dated payment using the bank's site, which Quicken would then place in your register (same as it used to do when Direct Connect was the method and you actually initiated the one-off payment from within Quicken itself), that would overcome this final missing piece. Then EWC+ would functionally be not really different from Direct Connect, except that you'd used the bank's site to initiate one-off and repeating payments.

In other words for repeating online payments, you yourself can set up a "bill/reminder" in Quicken, to create the periodic upcoming future-dated register entries (say a month in advance of when they pay). And for one-off payments the bank should send down that future-dated uncleared upcoming payment, which Quicken would place in your register so that you could see it into the future until its actual pay date (when the cleared transaction would then be sent down).

Jon

Mark1104 said:

@Jon - but can't you pay the credit card directly at the issuer's website using your routing number / checking account number or the debit card?  that way the charge is direct to the checking account and avoids Bill Pay. If the cash is coming directly from Fidelity, I can see the complexity. 

I don't want to spread my Fidelity account number around, I prefer to push the money rather than pull. And Fidelity transfers the money electronically whenever possible, only one bill I pay through them actually results in a check being mailed.

Anyway, I have a preference for Direct Connect simply because I don't see any reason to feed my financial information through a third party like Intuit - I get no benefit from that. It's got nothing to do with Bill Pay - I haven't had an account that supported Bill Pay via Direct Connect in a couple decades.

Chris_QPW

DSperber said:

Ideally if the bank would send down a "uncleared one-off future-dated transaction" on the night that you create that one-off future-dated payment using the bank's site, which Quicken would then place in your register (same as it used to do when Direct Connect was the method and you actually initiated the one-off payment from within Quicken itself), that would overcome this final missing piece. Then EWC+ would functionally be not really different from Direct Connect, except that you'd used the bank's site to initiate one-off and repeating payments.

Too bad the world doesn't work "ideally".  If it did, way back when Direct Connect was created as a standard all the financial institutions would have adopted it, or the federal government would have forced them to like they did in the EU.  And then we wouldn't have this mess now.

But they didn't.  I will point out something about "security" Direct Connect/OFX can be just as secure as the new Express Web Connect +/FDX, the newest versions of it allow for using the same secure protocol for logging in.  The financial institutions simply choose not to go that route.  Some of them still use version 1.0 of the OFX protocol when 2.3 is the current version (decades different).  Note whether to support bill payment/transfers and such in Direct Connect is totally up to the financial institution and as such even if the financial institution considered that a security risk, they could have decided on that separately from one the main concerns, storing the username and password on the aggregator's servers.

Why didn't they?  Because that would require them to agree on things and they don't.  Yeah, we are going to be "saved" by the rolling out of FDX, not likely!  The same thing is going to happen that happened to the OFX protocol, and that is some number of financial institutions will adopt it, and most likely the majority will not.

Express Web Connect and other "aggregator systems" were created for a simple reason, hacking the system to try to get the information that their customers wanted.  So, in the US and Canada aggregation became the "standard".  The financial institutions aren't just doing this for security reasons.  Whether you realize it or not Quicken users are a small percentage of most financial institution's customers, but they have multiple aggregators that want to get access to the data for various reasons.  Dropping Direct Connect/OFX is simply because it isn't what other aggregators use.  This is a push so that they only have to support one protocol.

Now could Express Web Connect +/FDX be expanded to bring back some of the features lost from dropping Direct Connect/OFX, like syncing the bill payment transactions?  Yes, or maybe even like you said send some king of transaction using the current protocol.  But that would require you convincing the financial institution(s) that they should provide that feature.  In my opinion, that isn't likely to ever happen.

Bottom line is this is all driven from the financial institutions' side and unless there is a compelling reason that all of their customers want it, not just tiny Quicken community, it is never going to happen, arguing about it in a Quicken forum opposed where the financial institutions can see the discussion is sort of pointless.

Rudol

Is anyone having any success with enrolling in Quicken's Bill Pay? I know you can get the service without a fee for a period of time per Quicken's offer. The fee is not that important to me but how it works does matter. How does it differ from the BofA Direct Connect Bill Pay which was recently done away with? I would use Quicken Bill Pay if it offered the same features. I just don't want to enroll in the program, only to find out it is not as full-featured as was the now-defunct BofA Direct connection.

Chris_QPW

Rudol said:

Is anyone having any success with enrolling in Quicken's Bill Pay? I know you can get the service without a fee for a period of time per Quicken's offer. The fee is not that important to me but how it works does matter. How does it differ from the BofA Direct Connect Bill Pay which was recently done away with? I would use Quicken Bill Pay if it offered the same features. I just don't want to enroll in the program, only to find out it is not as full-featured as was the now-defunct BofA Direct connection.

It works quite different.  And because of the way it works I wouldn't recommend it because of the reports of it being unreliable, which I would actually expect because of how it works.  It isn't your financial institution sending out bill payments.
Here is my explanation of the system (along with other terms/systems):
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7916268/my-explanation-of-the-different-term-services-that-quicken-has-provides-and-provided-in-the-past

Here is Quicken Inc's:
What are the differences between Quicken Bill Manager and Quicken Bill Pay?

And a link to a user that seems to be into it:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7924819/online-billers-with-ewc-accounts

Rudol

Just a quick update on my switch from BofA to Wells Fargo. I move my bill pay/banking to Wells Fargo during the first week of October. All my direct deposits have been redirected to WF and all my payees have been transferred and are now being paid through the Quicken service provider which WF interfaces with. Everything is working correctly now and I have no problems with future cash flow scheduling. Even though WF does not handle the bill-paying process, I can get my downloads from the Service Provider. When I send and schedule a payment, I can see it in my posted Quicken register and can use that information to avoid overdrafts on my account. It's not quite as robust as BofA used to be, but everything works and I am satisfied that I can continue to pay my bills using Quicken. I just hope WF doesn't decide to dump Quicken as well downstream. Hope this helps anyone out there who needs an alternative banking option for the BofA fiasco.

Mark1104

@Rudol - I wouldn't charaterize it as a "BofA fiasco".  Rather it's a function of changing thought process of the risks associated with permitting aggregators (which would include Quicken) access to confidential transactional records.  Personally, and I will admit I am bias, I'd rather bank with BofA given its reputation as a leader on this issue and others over the past few years. 

I remind you that Wells is still under a OCC consent decree for the way they have treated their customers (fake bank accounts, overcharging for credit cards, mortages, etc.)  The issues of trust and protection of my money and to know I am being treated fairly as a customer far outweight whether or not my Quicken can download transactions from my bank or whether I can pay my bills from within Quicken.

just me two cents.