Automatic bank transaction imports are part of Wave’s Pro Plan. Learn more about Wave’s plans or how to subscribe.
Wave partners with Plaid to import your transactions. Sometimes, Plaid may not be able to maintain a connection with your bank. When this happens, you’ll see an error message in Wave. There are a few reasons why connections break, but import issues usually indicate that your bank made a change to their website, and Plaid must make an adjustment to restore the connection.
If your transactions have stopped importing, the best thing to do is wait for Plaid to resolve the issue and for transactions to resume importing. If you prefer not to wait, you can get your transactions into Wave by uploading a bank statement, or by using Wave’s Google Sheets integration, Wave Connect. If you choose to manually upload transactions using one of these methods, you can temporarily turn off your transaction imports under Banking > Connected accounts. When you turn it back on, you can select a date to import from to avoid duplicate transactions.
Below are some common reasons why your transactions may not be importing.
Your bank’s website is down due to technical difficulties or maintenance
When a bank’s website goes down, Plaid is no longer able to import your transactions. You may see an accompanying error message on your bank’s website, but it’s also possible that certain parts of your bank’s site can go down without being immediately apparent.
For example, a bank’s website might be completely functional when you sign in to your account directly using their website or mobile app but not be accessible to third parties, like Plaid. In these cases, Plaid has to wait until your bank resolves any issues on its side before transactions can import again.
Your bank made updates to its security
Your bank may have changed its security processes behind the scenes, blocking third parties like Plaid from accessing transactions. In instances like this, Plaid will have to update its systems to comply with these new processes.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
MFA refers to a login security measure that prompts you to verify your identity in addition to the use of a username and password. For example, after you log into your account on your bank’s website, you may be asked for a verification code you receive via a text message.
Plaid generally supports the use of MFA, but certain types of MFA are not supported. Different banks implement MFA in different ways. If your bank uses an unsupported method of MFA, Plaid will not be able to import your transactions. Unsupported MFA types are rare, and Plaid is continually working to support all possible MFA types.
You must acknowledge a notification on your bank’s website
Your bank might notify you of changes or updates to your account using a banner, popup message, or other methods of communication on their website. These notifications can block Plaid from importing your transactions.
To resolve this issue, log in to your online banking portal at your bank’s website and acknowledge or clear the notification. Once you acknowledge any notifications, usually by clicking OK or closing the notification, Plaid can resume transaction imports.
If clearing the notifications did not resolve the issue, it means that there is some other issue with Plaid’s connection to your bank which needs to be resolved by Plaid.
Your bank is no longer supported by Plaid
In very rare cases, a previously supported bank may no longer be supported. Reasons for this vary but might include:
- Your bank decided to prevent all third parties from accessing its data
- Your bank made a fundamental change to its systems, making it too difficult for Plaid to access transaction data
Plaid will try to resolve any issues by working directly with the affected bank, but a resolution isn’t guaranteed. These situations will have different estimated resolution times because of the varied nature of the root causes. Wave cannot provide estimated resolution times or updates.