Confused about the Wells Fargo change

Don Awalt

Now originally I thought everyone had to move to EWC+. I was on Direct Connect. I converted to EWC+ about a week ago. But, I read now, I believe this is the first time I saw the circled statement below, that Direct Connect users aren't affected by all this. Did I make a mistake moving away from Direct Connect, should I change back? I am totally confused as to what the best connection option is now. Thanks!

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Don Awalt,

To answer your question, it depends. If you use the bank bill pay through Quicken feature, that feature works only with Direct Connect; it will not work with Express Web Connect+. If you track Wells Fargo accounts under more than one User ID, Direct Connect is the better choice. If neither of those apply, then it's a matter of personal preference.

I hope this helps!

Don Awalt

Thanks @Quicken Kristina ! So just to be clear, on the EWC+ side, is there any advantage I would see by using that over DC if I did not use the DC only features you mentioned? EDIT: So it seems the EWC+ connect option was mostly to get people off of EWC?

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

The main thing I can think of that may cause some to prefer EWC+ over Direct Connect is with Direct Connect, you see some Wells Fargo branding/logos show up in your Quicken. Some people perceive that as having ads pushed on them and don't like that.

Yes, the migration to EWC+ is because Wells Fargo will not support EWC in the near future. They do intend to continue supporting Direct Connect for now, so only those using EWC need to migrate.

I hope this clears things up!

Don Awalt

Thank you @Quicken Kristina

Chris_QPW

I doubt that the branding actually comes up (it only rarely comes up and then they just want to remove the splash screen when they aren't even using that financial institution anymore). I think it really comes down to "They don't have a choice". When most of the financial institutions switch over, they are purposely killing off Direct Connect to save money and to reduce the connect types that they have to maintain.

Between Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect + the user should prefer it for the very reason that Express Web Connect doesn't use a standardized protocol and requires your username and password to be stored on the Intuit server. Whereas Express Web Connect is using a standardized protocol (FDX) between Intuit and the financial institution which is hopefully going to be more reliable and certainly is going to be more secure.

mshiggins

What advantages does DC have over EWC+ for Wells Fargo? Well for one thing, apparently DC has better payee name handling than EWC+:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7943566/wells-fargo-payee-download