Compromised or replaced card? Keep your books connected
What breaks when a card is reissued or canceled, and how to re-link it so your books stay current.
Compromised or replaced card? Keep your books connected
It happens to almost everyone eventually: your card gets compromised, expires, or you lose it, and the bank mails you a new one with a new number. When that happens, the secure connection that feeds your transactions into Uplinq often stops working. A quiet, broken connection is the most common reason books fall behind without anyone noticing — so it's worth knowing what to do.
A reissued card usually breaks its Plaid connection. Reconnect it the same way you connected it the first time, and your transactions start flowing again. If reconnecting won't stick, we'll switch that account to statement uploads — no detail is lost either way.
Why a new card breaks the connection
Plaid links to your account using your online banking login, but a reissued card can still interrupt that link. A few things can happen:
- The connection for the replaced card drops, since the old card number it was tracking is no longer active.
- Sometimes the break spreads to other cards on the same login — even ones you didn't replace — because the bank resets the whole connection during a security event.
- The bank may require you to re-verify or accept new terms before any third-party connection works again.
None of this means your data is gone. It just means the live feed has paused until you re-authorize it.
A dropped connection doesn't announce itself loudly — your transactions simply stop updating. If a card was recently replaced, it's worth checking your Data Hub for any account flagged with a yellow Reconnect or Fix banking connection prompt.
How to reconnect
Reconnecting a replaced card works exactly like connecting it the first time — you re-authorize through Plaid and the feed resumes. Rather than repeat those steps here, follow the walkthrough we keep current:
If the bank issued the new card under a new login or account number, you may need to connect it as a fresh account rather than reconnecting the old one. The same Plaid steps apply — just search for your bank and log in again.
What happens to your history
Reconnecting doesn't erase anything. The transactions already pulled from the old card stay in your books. Once the connection is live again, Plaid resumes from where it left off and backfills recent activity, so you shouldn't lose any of your history across the card change.
If there's a gap between when the old card stopped and the new one reconnected, your bookkeeper can fill it from a statement covering those weeks — see statement uploads below.
When to switch to statement uploads
Some banks — Capital One is the one we see most often — won't hold a stable Plaid connection after a card change, no matter how many times you reconnect. When that's the case, don't keep fighting it. We'll switch that account to monthly statement uploads instead, which keeps your books just as current without the connection dropping again.
If a card was recently replaced and you're not sure whether the connection survived, just let your bookkeeper know. We can check from our side, retry the reconnect, or move you to statement uploads — whichever keeps your books current with the least hassle for you.