Possible change in game plan on initial data source (i.e. Plaid first, then Teller)

[Shpigford]

I realized today that Plaid actually lets you create a developer account that gives you 100 "live" connections for free. You just stay in "Developer" mode and you should be good to go.

So now, in the name of just getting the codebase to a functional stuff as fast as possible, here's what I'm thinking...

1. Use Plaid out of the gate. Provide README instructions on how to do that. That will cover the majority for US folks. This should require very little code change (though there may be some stuff we need to do to detach Finicity requirement).
2. Create a separate project to officially abstract data sources and let folks create "data plugins".
3. Jump in on Teller (and any other data provider folks want to build) using the new abstracted data source plugins.

Thoughts?

[Doma-byte]

Can you outline what the README instructions will cover for developers who want to use Plaid in the project and you mentioned the need to detach Finicity requirements. Can you elaborate on what changes or considerations this might involve?

[tmyracle]

Just ran into my first roadblock, when trying to add a bank account in the UI I got slapped with this error:
OAuth redirect URI must be configured in the developer dashboard. See https://plaid.com/docs/#oauth-redirect-uris

and of course production access is required for OAuth in Plaid
I tried adding a URL to my Plaid dashboard to see if it would work anyway, but no luck

[eneskaya]

Hey @tmyracle, is it because it's a local URL?

[tmyracle]

@eneskaya it was the https url from my ngrok tunnel which should work so i don't think so

[eneskaya]

If Plaid really supports 100 connections, that should be more than enough for personal use! Data plugins is a great idea. Was also thinking of taking it completely "off the grid" by providing CSV files with your account transactions.

[Shpigford]

We definitely want to add manual statement/data imports.

[Xadoy]

Just ran into my first roadblock, when trying to add a bank account in the UI I got slapped with this error: OAuth redirect URI must be configured in the developer dashboard. See https://plaid.com/docs/#oauth-redirect-uris

and of course production access is required for OAuth in Plaid I tried adding a URL to my Plaid dashboard to see if it would work anyway, but no luck

Unfortunately, this means it's a no-go. I checked the OAuth doc, it says OAuth requires Production access (which means paid-plan) for US and CA.
https://plaid.com/docs/link/oauth/#request-production-access-from-plaid

[Shpigford]

@tmyracle @Xadoy Good catches on production access being required. Major bummer.

I think that puts the nail in the proverbial coffin for changing the game plan to get Plaid working.

Thanks for digging in to that!

[Xadoy]

@raasbh110 dude you sound like a LLM

[Xadoy]

Yea, it's a bummer for the US users. It was a great plan, and it's sad that it may not work. However! For Canada users, I just checked that the major banks don't require Oauth. I verified that by calling /institutions/get with 'CA' as the country code, only WISE supports OAuth. I guess it's a bad news for Canadian users who use fintech products that use plaid behind it (due to security reasons). But for the ones with risky mindset who wants to try maybe out, it might be a good solution. I might find some time to connect one of my accounts to see if it works.

[eneskaya]

@raasbh110 dude you sound like a LLM

100% my thought, you just wrote it 😄

[Xadoy]

Though the discussion is closed, just want to give a quick update on CA usage in case anyone finds the post. It doesn't work for me with plaid sandbox. I hit two problems:

1. it throws error when currency code is not USD. Manually removed the line.
2. Cannot sync account because prisma cannot insert transactions. Checked postgres container log, seems like null issue. Though the insert SQL also looks weird, I think there's a problem in the ETL, or somewhere before the insert command.

[Shpigford]

@Xadoy Yeah, anytime we started dabbling with supporting CA-usage (even in sandbox) we'd hear from our account rep at plaid about paying more to actually get access to it. 😒