Bank Connection Re-Authentication

Not all bank connections behave the same way once established. Some banks enforce a formal expiration on data-sharing consent, requiring clients to re-authenticate on a predictable schedule, while others remain connected indefinitely until something disrupts the credentials. Understanding which category each bank falls into helps your team proactively manage disconnections before they affect a client's workflow.

Two Types of Disconnections

Before diving into the bank-by-bank breakdown, it helps to understand that bank connections in Propio can break for two distinct reasons:

1. Credential-based disconnection: The connection breaks because something changed on the client's end (e.g., a password update, a triggered MFA challenge, or a security alert from the bank). This can happen at any bank, at any time, and is not predictable.

2. OAuth consent expiration: The bank formally enforces a time limit on how long a third-party app (such as Propio) can access account data. When the consent period ends, the client must actively re-authorize the connection, even if their credentials haven't changed. This is a bank-level policy, not a Propio or Plaid limitation.

The table below focuses on the second category (formal, bank-enforced consent expiration) since this is the one that can be anticipated and planned for.

Re-Authentication Frequency by Bank

Banks That Require Annual Re-Authentication

For banks with a formal 12-month consent cycle (i.e., American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, and Citibank), the client will need to re-authorize their connection once per year. This is triggered automatically when the consent period ends and does not require a password change or any issue with the account.

When re-authentication is needed, the client will be prompted to go through Plaid's re-linking flow, which typically takes a few minutes. For these banks, it's good practice to note the connection date in the client's file and anticipate the renewal roughly 12 months later.

What Happens When a Connection Expires

When a bank connection expires or is disrupted, Propio will surface an alert prompting the client to re-authenticate. The re-linking process goes through Plaid's standard Link flow and typically takes a few minutes. No transaction data is lost, the connection simply needs to be re-authorized to resume syncing.

For banks on the formal 12-month cycle, the expiration is clean and predictable. For banks like Wells Fargo where disconnections are credential-triggered, the process is the same but the timing is less predictable.

Important Considerations

For clients at banks with a formal annual consent cycle, building a re-authentication check into your annual client review cadence can prevent unexpected gaps in transaction sync. A disconnected account does not lose historical data, but it will stop pulling new transactions until re-authorized, which can create reconciliation gaps if not caught quickly.

Banco Popular's re-authentication behavior is currently undocumented in Plaid's official resources. If you manage clients with Banco Popular accounts and notice a pattern in connection behavior, that information would be worth tracking to establish a practical baseline.

Sources

• Plaid Documentation — Institution-specific OAuth behaviors: https://plaid.com/docs/link/oauth/#institution-specific-behaviors
• Plaid Documentation — Refreshing item consent: https://plaid.com/docs/link/oauth/#refreshing-item-consent

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