Connecting bank & credit card accounts with Plaid
Link your accounts securely in a few clicks, assign them to the right business, and know what to do if a bank won't connect.
Connecting bank & credit card accounts with Plaid
Connecting your accounts is the single most important step in getting your books up and running. Uplinq uses Plaid — the same secure service used by most major banking apps — to pull in your transactions automatically, so your bookkeeper isn't waiting on statements every month.
The online banking username and password for each business account you want to connect. You'll enter these directly into Plaid's secure window — Uplinq never sees or stores your passwords.
How to connect an account
- From the left-hand menu, open the Data Hub.
- Find the Banking & Credit Cards section and click the green Add New Account button.
- Search for your bank and select it.
- Log in with your online banking credentials in the Plaid window.
- Choose the specific business accounts you want to connect (skip personal accounts you don't use for the business).
- If you have more than one business with Uplinq, assign each account to the correct business when prompted.
That's it. Your transactions typically begin appearing within about 24 hours as Plaid completes the initial pull of your history.
Connect every checking, savings, and credit card account the business uses — including cards your employees carry. The more complete the picture, the more accurate (and faster) your books.
Assigning accounts to the right business
If you run multiple entities, each connected account needs to live under the right one. When you connect, watch for the prompt that asks which business an account belongs to. If an account ends up under the wrong entity, leave a comment or message your onboarding specialist and we'll move it.
If a bank won't connect
Some banks don't connect reliably through Plaid. This is normal and easy to work around — it does not hold up your books.
Banks we most often see issues with:
- Capital One — connections here drop more often than other banks. If it disconnects, you can reconnect it (see below), or we can switch you to monthly statement uploads.
- Bank of America CashPro and other enterprise/treasury portals — generally not supported by Plaid.
- Mercury credit cards and some newer fintech cards.
- Business PayPal — needs a business (not personal) PayPal login to connect.
- Venmo — can't be connected through Plaid; we use exported statements/CSVs instead.
When a bank won't connect through Plaid, we have two reliable fallbacks:
Reconnecting a dropped connection
Connections occasionally need to be refreshed — usually after a password change, a new card, or a bank security update.
- Open the Data Hub and look for an account flagged with a yellow Reconnect or Fix banking connection prompt.
- Click it and re-authorize through the Plaid window.
- If the reconnect spins without finishing (most common with Capital One), let your bookkeeper know — we'll either retry from our side or switch that account to statement uploads.
When a bank reissues a card, the connection often breaks — sometimes even for other cards on the same login. See Compromised or replaced card? to get reconnected.
Is this safe?
Yes. Plaid uses a secure, read-only connection: it can see your transactions and balances, but it cannot move money. Your banking credentials are entered directly into Plaid and are never shared with Uplinq. For accounts where we use a direct login instead of Plaid, we always request read-only access — more on that in Giving Uplinq read-only access.