Quicken Email - Wells Fargo Changes! (DC to Express Web Connect +) (edit)

I went through this with B of A. It's truly a pain you-know-where.

I still pay my bills through B of A, but I have to go to the bank web site to do it. Then I have to enter the same data into Quicken, meaning I type in everything twice and hope I don't make any mistakes (which I have).

I have heard that PNC Bank intends to maintain Direct Connect, but who knows for how long. PNC is a "sustaining member" of the Financial Data Exchange, which is behind the switch away from Direct Connect. But apparently dropping Direct Connect is not a requirement for membership. Crystal ball is foggy.

@Bob. said:

What an absolute pain if I am forced to do that. Had always expected if I lost this. Quicken would have a bill pay that I could plug in to take its place. Does not seem that Quicken and Wells are in agreement on that.

I think Quicken and WF are 100% in agreement on the transition from EWC to EWC+. And if DC also transitions to EWC+ and Bank Bill Pay goes away they will be in 100% agreement on that, too. That's an easy one to understand because it is solely the financial institution (FI) that determines which type(s) of connection methods they will support, for which kinds of accounts and for which type(s) of services. Quicken has absolutely no say in that matter since it is a contract that the FI initiates with Intuit. And when a FI decides to make a change in what they support Quicken has no choice but to support that decision.

We should never assume anything about the FIs and what in Quicken they support. It is not uncommon for FIs make changes so we need to be able to roll with the punches and adjust to those changes in a manner that best supports our needs.

Quicken does have an alternate 3rd party service to pay bills from banks that do not support Bank Bill Pay. If WF does end up dropping Bank Bill Pay and we do not wish to change banks, then we can explore that option or:

• Pay bills from the bank website.
• Go to the billers' websites and set up pull payment transactions there whereby they debit our checking account.
• Or go back to writing and mailing paper checks.

That FAQ is not only stale, it is inaccurate!! I opened an account at TD Bank to test and then was told Bill Pay there is ONLY for business customers! Closed the account. And St Mary's is baffled why they are listed. That file is near worthless. I'm shocked :)

One should not assume that Quicken has made any statement other than "these banks support Bank Bill Pay". They state several places in Support, Help and Community that some banks do place various restrictions/requirements on DC access and Bank Bill Pay service, such as: Some charge monthly fees, some have unique login requirements, some allow DC/Bank Bill Pay only for certain types of accounts and some allow DC/Bank Bill Pay for only premium accounts. It is the users who own contacting their bank to see what restrictions/requirements they have for both DC and Bank Bill Pay.

It's fair to say that list is a bit stale (as I'd mentioned, PNC Bank is not listed but should be) but to say it is inaccurate pointing to a TD Bank restriction on Bill Pay means you assumed something that Quicken never stated nor implied. To state that it is worthless is also an incorrect assumption because most of what is in there (from my review of the FIDIR.txt file searching for the word "PAYMENT") is quite accurate. And don't forget that there are business users who use Quicken, not just consumers, so for them including TD Bank in this list is quite accurate.

I'm pretty sure that Quicken does not know, nor has any desire to know, much of anything about what restrictions/requirements individual banks might place upon their customers if they wish to use the Bank Bill Pay feature. They leave that up to us to go figure out with the FIs.

BTW, I do not see St Mary's included in that list so it is not surprising then that they did not know what you were talking about.

I sometimes chat with developers. They seem to think this affects the EWC side only - meaning the Online Biller needs to change but the Checking Account can remain Direct Connect. I suspect that may not be true, but if it is, I wonder if a BofA user could see if that works for them. Then again, it might only be Wells that can work that way maintaining Direct for Checking and Bill Pay but forcing EWC+ for Online bill scraping.

At this time, of the banks that have transitioned to EWC+, only US Bank and PNC Bank have retained DC and Bank Bill Pay. All of the others transitioned their DC and EWC connections to EWC+.

EWC+ does not support Bank Bill Pay because it, like EWC, is a 1-way communication (download only). Bank Bill Pay requires a 2-way communications so the payment or transfer command can be uploaded to the bank from Quicken. BofA users no longer have Bank Bill Pay because BofA no longer supports DC.

BTW, FIs can support more than 1 kind of connection method independently of the others. Many support DC as well as EWC and WC. If a FI wants to change one of those connection methods to something else it has no impact on the other connection methods the FI retained. I have accounts with PNC and when PNC transitioned their EWC connection to EWC+ there was nothing that I needed to do at all. DC and Bank Bill Pay just continued as normal.

Are you confident the Direct remains - at least for now. Wells used to charge for Direct or at least a large minimum balance. That changed last year?

I think and hope that WF will retain DC…at least for now. But Quicken's announcement did not say anything about DC and until Quicken specifically confirms this I am not sure what will happen.

I do not recall exactly when WF made DC free but I think it was in Sep of 2019 or 2020 (for some odd reason I remember the months, just not the specific year but I'm pretty confident that it was 3-4 years ago). I just remember how happy I was when they did that because I manage my mother-in-law's finances and she has a WF checking account. It was so nice to finally be able to use Bank Bill Pay with them.