[jlongster]

@jpeeler @Marksort I wish the same. I've also given feedback to Plaid that they should implement an encryption scheme that allows data to be encrypted from Plaid to the user, so at least apps which sit in the middle couldn't read your data. Nobody is interested in that though.

There _sort of_ is a solution where your computer directly connects to the bank. The format is called OFX (https://github.com/libofx/libofx), and there is a directory of banks that provide these files directly online. This site (https://www.ofxhome.com/) lists the URLs to use for each bank.

I used that for a while many years ago. But it's terrible and requires massive maintenance. For an app that requires connections to arbitrary banks, there's no way developers can support these direct downloads. There's always different errors in data for different banks, etc. Unfortunately, Plaid is solving a real problem