Quicken and PNC Direct Connect - also Bill Pay
As of May 17, 2023, Direct Connect to PNC is not working. I have reached out to both Quicken and PNC. The Quicken support team mentioned that this is a PNC Bank issue. I spent more than one hour with the PNC Support people. I still cannot connect and update PNC Accounts in Quiken and have also lost a direct connection to PNC. Any thoughts or ideas?
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PNC is starting to transition both EWC and DC connected accounts to EWC+. See the Community Announcement about this at .
My EWC accounts changed to EWC+ today but my DC account has not changed, yet. However, when I did OSU this morning I got an OL-295 error code. I then did Update Now and was able to get the download completed.
Other users have said their DC connections stopped working today. But they have not confirmed whether this is because DC has been changed to EWC+ or if it is because of some other error.
If you are getting an error code, then you might want to try downloading via Update Now (Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Update Now).
If that doesn't work, try again tomorrow. But each day that goes by increases the odds that your account(s) will change the connection method to EWC+. You will know it is your turn to make this change when you get a popup requesting you to reauthorize your bank account.
If you use DC Bank Bill Pay, when EWC+ has cut in you will no longer be able to schedule bill pays with PNC from with Quicken. This is not a Quicken issue. The banks are making this change to eliminate DC and EWC and consolidate on EWC+. EWC+ is a 1-way communication method (downloads only) so Bank Bill Pay, which requires 2-way communication (download and upload) cannot work.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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I understand this may not be a Quicken issue for banks switching to EWC+. However, my main reason for using Quicken has been to do all our banking through Quicken. Would Quicken Bill Pay work with banks or is that also obsolete?0
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Has your connection been changed to EWC+ from DC? If not, did you try doing Update Now or OSU, again, to see if PNC still downloads for you with DC?
My EWC setups in 2 different TEST files were transitioned to EWC+ yesterday. But my PNC accounts in my main data file are still set up with DC and I was able to schedule a new Bill Pay for delivery on 6/30 just this morning.
Quicken's Bill Manager Bill Pay still works with EWC+ but if PNC is the same as other banks that have switched to EWC+, the only option currently available is CheckPay (printing and mailing of checks to the billers). The QuickPay (ACH/EFT transfers to billers) does not currently work however Quicken has stated that they are trying to find a solution that will restore QuickPay.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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Gotta admit this is unexpected and frustrating.
I have been a quicken (win now mac) user for 12+ years, and my foundation use-case is automated bill payment.
I currently have a Deluxe subscription. Am I now going to have to upgrade to "Premier" just to pay bills with my PNC account? Will there be a limit on how many payments I can make each month (currently 40+)?0 -
I'm not surprised that this change to EWC+ is happening. It's been pretty well known and communicated in this Community for over a year that many, if not most financial institutions with DC will be transitioning to EWC+ at some point. I was hoping that at a minimum PNC would not be one of the early adopters of EWC+ so I was disappointed when I got the email notice from Quicken on 4/26 that PNC would transition sometime in the next "30-60" days. What did catch me off guard is that the transition started yesterday, just 21 days after the received email, and not the "30-60" days that the email mentioned.
If you have not already done so, you might want to read this article about Bill Manager: . If I'm understanding this correctly, it costs $9.95/month to add it to Deluxe but the Premier costs only $2.00/month more than Deluxe so it certainly would make economic sense to upgrade to Premier versus paying that $9.95/month for it.
As far at the number of checks per month goes: I don't use Quicken's Bill Manager but my Quicken.com account shows that Premier includes 12 QuickPays and 3 CheckPays per month, not 40+ per month. It is my understanding that because of issues with QuickPay Quicken has added additional CheckPays at no charge but I am not sure if this will apply to PNC and exactly what the number of "free" checks will be. Perhaps someone else can provide better information on this.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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Good news! I just got off my phone call with a very nice and knowledgeable PNC bank support (Tier 3) individual who walked me through resetting the PNC Accounts in Quicken. In the end, now my PNC Bank account can send and receive payments in Quicken as it used to do a few days ago. So there is light at the end of the tunnel!
I am unsure if listing the steps we went through will make sense. If there is interest, I can try to put steps in a message.1 -
> @WBajwa said:
> Good news! I just got off my phone call with a very nice and knowledgeable PNC bank support (Tier 3) individual who walked me through resetting the PNC Accounts in Quicken. In the end, now my PNC Bank account can send and receive payments in Quicken as it used to do a few days ago. So there is light at the end of the tunnel!
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> I am unsure if listing the steps we went through will make sense. If there is interest, I can try to put steps in a message.
Thanks, if it's not too much trouble, can you give us the steps, or at least the magic words for who to talk to at PNC and whether we should do it before or after allowing Quicken to "upgrade"0 -
Here are the steps to add "Bank Bill Pay" in Quicken for PNC Bank:
In Quicken, go to “Account List” (Ctrl-A).
Click on “Edit” for the PNC Account.
Go to the tab “Online Services” and click on “Deactivate” (if it is active)
Let Quicken finish the deactivation process.
Select “Activate”
Go to “Search for your financial institution.”
In the search box, enter “PNC” and select “PNC Bank – Direct Connect”
Add credentials when prompted (social security number and a PIN that the PNC Bank provided when initially online access was established). For example, I had to locate this PIN from my records which was issued in 2013.
The system will prompt you to change the PIN.
Change PIN and let Quicken complete the account addition with the “Online Bill Pay” Active (see attachment)0 -
@WBajwa - Thanks for the update. So your situation is not that DC has transitioned to EWC+ yet. That explains why my DC connection has not done so, as well. I had a similar issue with PNC and DC about 2 weeks ago. My Quicken connection on their end had been become locked and they had to unlock it. Then, like you, I was able to setup the connection, again, using my UserID and the original PNC-supplied PW.
There are a couple of other threads regarding DC for PNC not working. I'm guessing now that they are having the same issue. to I'll point them to this thread. Maybe that will help them.
BTW, we should not get overly optimistic about this particular DC connection issue being resolved.. It was confirmed to me by some members of the Quicken Development Team that PNC will be ending DC but they would not tell me when that would be. If PNC follows the same timeline as US Bank did, DC will transition in about 1-2 months (shortly after all the EWC accounts have been transitioned). But we can hope that it will not occur that quickly.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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I asked the support person who helped me resolve this issue with "Direct Connect" about PNC Bank ending "Direct Connect" option and he said that he has not heard anything about it. He was from their Teir 3 Support team. It will be a sad day if PNC removes DC.0
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Have to say, if I lose Direct Connect with PNC, I likely wont have a compelling reason to keep them as my primary personal bank.1
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@WBajwa - It is quite possible that the Tier 3 PNC person you were talking to is a Sustaining tech or engineer who is focused on daily operations and might not be much aware of PNC's development plans.
All I know is that the Quicken people who told me this are the very engineers and program management people who are actually working to implement it. I did some testing with them on EWC+ and during that testing they provided me some high level information (no schedules) regarding US Bank's and PNC's plans regarding EWC+. What they told me regarding US Bank EWC, US Bank DC and PNC EWC transtions has occurred just like they said it would. They also told me that PNC will transition DC so I feel pretty confident that it is going to happen, as well. In my mind, it is just a matter of time.
BTW, what the Quicken folks told me is not really too confidential. It's been widely assumed and discussed in this forum for more than a year that whichever financial institutions do transition to EWC+ will do so for both DC and EWC. So far, that is exactly what has happened with every one that has already transitioned to EWC+.
And, yes, I agree with you that when PNC discontinues DC it will be a sad day.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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Unfortunately, looks like PNC is officially transitioning all Direct Connect customers to the new EWC+ by 5/31, which means the Intra-bank funds transfers between PNC accounts is suddenly ending, along with the Bank Bill Pay service. Apparently, transactions scheduled prior to 5/31 will still process, but PNC won't accept any new transactions after 5/31. We will have to start using the Bill Pay and Transfer features on the PNC website instead.
And Quicken doesn't have a good replacement solution in place. Here's verbiage from Quicken's CEO Eric Dunn that was sent to in a monthly email update to all Quicken customers on April 20th, 2023:
"We continued our work on modernizing and improving connectivity to financial institutions, with updates to our connections to Bank of America and American Express since my last letter. We know that having to set up connectivity again can be annoying or frustrating, and we have tried hard to make the changeovers smoother as we gain experience with the new systems. We do think we have gotten better, which is important because we expect more bank migrations in the years ahead. We also recognize that some bank bill-pay customers lost access within Quicken to bill pay because of the new connectivity protocols, which don’t support external bill-pay access. Although we don’t have a good solution right now, we have a project underway to make major improvements to our own Quicken Bill Manager, which we believe will make it a worthy successor to integrated bank bill pay in about a year."0 -
I am having the same connectivity issues with PNC, but it's only for my Visa card. Bank accounts using Direct Connect are fine, it's the move to EWC+ that's hosing my one account. I thought that it could have been anti-virus (disabled during connection setup attempt) or even my network ad-blockers. I disabled anything and everything that could throw a wrench into the connectivity issue.
The issue that I'm seeing is that when I try to connect, Quicken opens a browser to PNC and I get an error "Something is wrong with UI.". Being an IT professional, that is a useless response. I've tried Safari, Chrome, Firefox with the same issues. I've even connected my laptop to my phone's Hotspot to get the connection off of my home network, to no avail.
PNC, if you monitor these forums, I have little to no interest in wasting my time on your back-end changes. I will simply use a different credit card and cut yours up. There are so many Financial Institutions that support Direct Connect.
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The only information I see about PNC dropping Direct Connect is from Quicken, as quoted above.
I have spoken to a number of people at PNC - even those in the Quicken department, a dedicated group that I have reliably used for support in the past. They all say there is no plan at PNC to change how they connect to Quicken.
I may be cynical in thinking that Quicken is trying to get us all to upgrade to Quicken Bank Manager, increasing their earnings. I don't like to think that of a company that I have trusted and done business with for so long (first version was for Apple DOS).
I suppose we can wait until May 31 to find out who is telling the truth.
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Well, it's June, and it looks like online bank bill pay is still available to me, but I haven't yet had need to actually try it1
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Yes, I have been able to use bank bill pay on DC on PNC three times since June 1. No problems. Big fuss over nothing, thank you, Quicken.🤔
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I just got an email from Quicken today telling me that if I have a PNC DC account, I should not migrate it! That, after I received messages several weeks ago telling me that I had to migrate, which I did immediately. And since I apparently wasn't careful enough, I had to manually transfer 20 years worth of checking account transactions from my old DC account to my new EWC+, and then search and reconcile errors I made along the way. It took me at least a full day. Now, they're saying, "Oops, never mind!" and "Sorry for any inconvenience." I am beyond frustrated and angry, and if I could see any way of getting rid of this software subscription, I'd do it in a New York minute! The email and a link they provided today tells me how I can restore my old DC account if I accidentally followed their damned instructions! Oh joy!!!
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Well, I just converted back to DC from EWC+ for my PNC checking and money market accounts. Unlike the apparently unnecessary conversion to EWC+ (which was a multi-hour disaster in which I had to call Quicken support to get me out of my mess), these instructions linked by the 6/13 email were quite a bit more clear. The best thing of all is that I can stop my search for a new bank. I had decided PNC no longer wanted me as a customer by dropping DC. The loser here is a local bank which still has DC and was within days of getting my accounts. I should probably continue the switch to the local bank but it takes time I can better use on other things. I don't know if it is Quicken or PNC, or both, that think killing DC is a good idea, but I don't. If there is a security issue, fix it within the DC architecture. It certainly isn't being done for speed improvement as EWC+ is slower than EWC and much slower than DC. - Now I feel better having vented.
By the way, I've never had my PNC credit card on DC; can I convert that too as it would be nice to make payments as a simple intrabank, inter-account transfer?
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Let me supplement the above. i was too quick to assume all is fixed. Once I loaded all of my payments and tried to send them i found out that they don't go. They sit in my ledger to be sent. I spent the last hour-plus on the phone with Quicken Premium Support. I'm sure it's not the support tech's fault but he didn't have a clue and after an hour he decided i should go back to a file that preceded my first conversion to EWC+ and see if that would still work. Since I have my preferences set to keep only the last 10 files in backup, such files were long gone. And then he wanted me to recreate the account as new, which would have required me to create a new password. And "he thought" the bank would download all of my old transactions for me (at least 15 years worth!) but he wasn't even sure if his test would work and then I'd be stuck with an unwanted new password. Frustration seems to be the result of this Quicken generated mess.
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@RJL - I had never changed my DC connection to EWC+. I am still able to send bill payment commands to PNC from within Quicken so you should be able to, as well.
After you had set up the account with PNC Bank - Direct Connect, again, did you then go to the Online Services tab of Account Details and enable Bank Bill Pay? When you had changed the connection from DC to EWC+ Bank Bill Pay would have been disabled and it will not reenable simply by setting up DC, again.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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@Boatnmaniac - Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately, as you know, I changed my connection type based on the instructions in the first Quicken email. I wish I followed your lead and not changed it; but I read it as mandatory. When I followed the process to convert back based on the 6/13 Quicken email, the Account details tab shows that not only is the connection type changed back to DC but it does reactivate Bank Bill Pay. I guess i could go in and shut it off and then reactivate it to see if that might help; my next step.
btw, one other thing happened on the conversion process back to DC. Even though I didn't ask for it, the conversion process created a new account in my account listing for a DC-connected credit card. And this is without deleting the EWC+ connection for the same credit card. I haven't even gone near that one yet but I have two credit card accounts for the same credit card now.
Also, I spent some considerable time on the phone with PNC today and the are aware of the problem. They asked me to try a few things and they promised to get back to me.
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I am having same issue although I think I only switched to EWC+ after I noticed that I was unable to send a scheduled payment in my register. Followed the directions in the recent email from Quicken, but I am unable to connect after choosing PNC Direct connect. I am using my SSN and the original PIN, but when I enter new PIN and confirm I keep getting an error connecting (see below). I called PNC and their Tier 3 support said it is a Quicken issue, and Quicken support chat wasn't helpful, and said I need to call or chat back Mon-Fri.
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@newittja - It sounds like your DC connection might have been locked out. This has happened with me when a while back I was prompted to enter a new PIN and PNC did not accept it. Then I could not use the old PIN nor the new PIN. PNC's Tier 3 needed to unlock the account but told me I would need to use the original PIN PNC sent me when I first set up DC with them. I was also told that I would need to use the original UserID they sent me (some PNC customers got custom UserIDs mailed to them while others were told to simply use their SSN). Fortunately, I still had both. She then unlocked it and I was able to use DC, again, using the original login info.
If I didn't have the original login info PNC would have needed to mail me new login info before I could set up DC, again.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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I'm still struggling with my issue, post-returning to DC connectivity per the Quicken instructions. This morning I poked around and discovered that my pin-vault still thinks that my DC accounts are EWC+. So, when I converted back to DC, it appears that most of Quicken thinks that the accounts are back to DC, but the password vault still thinks the accounts are EWC+. Anyone have any ideas as to how I can modify the password vault to reflect the needed logon info?
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You need to deactivate the account that you want to set up with DC. If you have more than one account you want set up with DC, deactivate each one before trying to set up the DC connection. Deactivation should remove the login information/listing from the PW Vault.
(Quicken Classic Premier Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11)
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I just want to close out my problem as I have finally resolved the issue. The deactivate/reactivate was the advice from Quicken support. That flat out didn't work even after a number of tries. After each time doing that, Quicken generally thought I was on DC, but the password vault didn't follow the rest of the program and seemed to be stuck on EWC+, even though the account list told me my accounts were DC. Then Quicken support told me to call the bank, which I did and they confirmed that I wasn't connecting due to lack of appropriate password. We talked and it was suggested that the best thing for me to do was to go back and recover a backup file from prior to the initial change. Thanks to OneDrive's version archiving, I was able to do that and everything started communicating again. Then, I followed Quicken's latest instructions very carefully and precisely and was able to change just my credit card to EWC+. Unfortunately, i had to manually retype entries since the initial conversion effort into my checking and money markets accounts to carry my accurate categories and memos forward, but that was well worth the effort. I released all of my bill payment instructions late last night and went to bed feeling very good. Thanks for the advice.
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