Topic: Which FIs support FOSS application access to OFX direct connect?
It seems that more and more institutions are making it increasingly difficult to use OFX Direct Connect with anything except Quicken. Last year, Chase started using Client UUID, and although it took some patches for several programs, it is now possible to access Chase credit card transactions with multiple FOSS applications. More recently, Bank of America seems to have discontinued supporting OFX Direct Connect at all, and now uses Express Web Connect. The little documentation I have found on this make it seem like from the user's perspective, it works exactly the same as direct connect, a single button push. Behind the scenes, it seems that it can use either direct connect, web connect, or even screen scraping, done once a day. If they have really dropped direct connect, then we're kind of stuck, as screen scraping or fully automated web connect are clearly not easy to program. If Intuit still has access to direct connect, but BoA is not releasing the required information (URL, FID, ORG) then I consider that a really bad thing. The problem with threatening to take my business elsewhere is that I don't know of any other bank/credit card/investment broker that does any better at supporting FOSS (i.e., unsupported) software. Some individual institutions do better than others, and sometimes you can find an individual support person who will work with you, but given the overall decreasing intelligence of tech support anywhere, I don't see this getting better, unless we can actually find some good examples.
So - if you have a bank/credit card/investment broker, which using FOSS software to do OFX Direct Connect, or at least does not actively make it difficult, how about posting it here. I'm ready to leave BoA, and I may even be willing to move my investments from Merrill Lynch (they have not been directly obstructionist, but they have not been very helpful) if I can find a more friendly place to go.
Jack