How do I connect a bank account?

Finance AI uses Plaid to read account balances, account metadata, and transactions. Plaid handles your bank login, and Finance AI does not see or store your bank password.

Connections are used for personal finance tracking: categorization, spending charts, net worth, goals, and assistant answers.

New connections can take a little time because banks prepare historical transaction data asynchronously. The app retries in the background, and the assistant will pick up new transactions as they arrive.

Finance AI syncs six calendar months for new transaction connections, including the current month. The home screen period picker only shows months that are available from synced local data.

After onboarding finishes, Finance AI queues the nightly categorization pass so the newly synced activity can be organized in the background.

• Checking and credit card transactions usually appear first.
• Investment holdings and loan balances depend on what the institution shares through Plaid.
• If an account does not appear for an institution that is already connected, open that institution from Connected Accounts and use Manage connection so Plaid can update the existing connection instead of creating a duplicate.
• During mobile onboarding, Finance AI asks you to connect accounts before adding any manual assets and choosing categories, so syncing can begin before the sync check and AI training steps.
• The mobile onboarding connection screen includes a full-screen institution search modal and frequently linked institution cards with Plaid-provided institution logos when available. If Plaid does not return a logo, the card falls back to institution initials. Search results appear below the search field as you type. When Plaid provides routing metadata for the selected institution, Finance AI includes it in the Link token so Plaid can highlight that institution; otherwise, Plaid opens normally.
• After the first mobile onboarding account connects, the frequently linked institution cards animate into the connected institution and account sync status while the search field remains available for adding more accounts.
• After a mobile Plaid connection succeeds and Finance AI saves the account, a brief confetti burst confirms that the account was connected.
• When the mobile onboarding connection screen switches from institution choices to the connected-account summary, it returns to the top and keeps the shorter page within its real scroll bounds.
• Mobile onboarding asks about mortgages, private company stock, and options immediately after the account-connection screen, so assets that Plaid cannot sync can be added next.
• On mobile, some banks open their own app or browser for OAuth. Finance AI uses app links to return you to the mobile app after that approval step.
• For iOS OAuth, Finance AI sends Plaid an HTTPS universal-link redirect URI and hosts the Apple app-site association file required for the app handoff.
• In internal sandbox tests, Finance AI can intentionally hold the first transaction sync so the syncing screen can be verified before transactions arrive.
• Some investment and loan accounts provide balances or holdings instead of regular transactions, so they are shown as connected without a transaction spinner.
• The onboarding sync check appears only while a transaction-capable account is still waiting for Plaid's initial transaction cursor.
• If the sync check is already on screen and the accounts finish their initial sync, the page updates in place and waits for you to continue.
• If transactions start arriving before the initial sync settles, Finance AI keeps showing a syncing indicator and the loaded count. The green check appears after Plaid's initial transaction cursor is ready.
• If a transaction-capable account finishes its initial sync with 0 synced transactions, Finance AI shows 0 transactions synced instead of a loading spinner. You can continue, but the AI cannot see transactions from that account unless Plaid sends them later.
• Assistant Connect suggestions keep their transaction evidence on Finance AI's server and pass only a short, user-specific reference through AI chat. If a reference cannot be verified, Finance AI refreshes the suggestion instead of asking you to use that card.
• Assistant Connect suggestions use confidence-ranked transaction evidence from the onboarding window. The assistant checks high-confidence suggestions before asking categorization questions about those rows, while generic statement wording, mobile checks, and merchant-like labels stay low confidence so they can be categorized or asked about instead of blindly searched.
• Closing Plaid from an assistant Connect card does not decline the suggestion. Use Not now if you want to skip that account. After you choose Not now, the assistant treats that connection suggestion as resolved, does not ask about connecting the same account again, and continues categorizing its transfer-like rows.
• During onboarding, Sav can show at most three Connect account recommendations total. Updated Finance AI clients show multiple verified cards together and wait for every card to be connected, declined with Not now, or resolved with an error before Sav continues; older clients receive the cards one at a time. After the third recommendation, Finance AI removes account-search and Connect recommendation tools for the rest of that onboarding and continues categorizing with the accounts already available.
• Finance AI blocks a new Plaid connection when the selected account has the same institution, account name, and mask as an account you already connected.
• You can still connect a second login at the same institution, such as another Venmo profile, when Plaid returns different account details.

Finance AI records Plaid Link troubleshooting events such as when Link opens, institution searches and selections, the Plaid screen reached, OAuth transitions, recoverable errors, exits, successful handoffs, request IDs, Link session IDs, and timestamps. This lets support distinguish an app launch problem from an institution or Plaid-flow problem.

Plaid sometimes reports unavailable analytics metadata as empty strings. Finance AI discards those empty optional values while preserving the event, so diagnostics do not interfere with the account-connection flow.

Plaid handles bank credentials directly. Finance AI's connection analytics do not receive or store your bank username, password, or multi-factor authentication answers.

• Institution search text can be included in connection diagnostics so support can identify a bank that was difficult to find.
• A session that is abandoned or closed can take several minutes to appear in server-side Plaid event delivery.
• Connection diagnostics are associated with the Finance AI user who started the Link session.