This fact sheet addresses common questions investors have about how Stessa establishes and maintains data connections to banks, credit card issuers, and lenders.

Many innovative financial platforms and apps use financial data aggregators like MoneyKit, Plaid, and Envestnet | Yodlee to connect customers to their banking data. These providers maintain secure connections to thousands of US-based banks so that companies like Stessa can focus on building powerful services to help you manage and understand your data. When you connect your financial accounts to Stessa, it's MoneyKit, Yodlee, and Plaid that do the heavy lifting in the background.

We know that it's super-frustrating when your bank connection breaks. It interrupts the free flow of data into your Stessa account and slows you down. While we work tirelessly to ensure smooth connectivity, the reality is that bank connections—whether provided through Yodlee, MoneyKit, or other financial data aggregators—are inherently complex and sometimes unreliable.

The U.S. banking system consists of 10,000+ financial institutions, each with its own security protocols, technology stack, and data formats. Unlike standardized systems such as credit card networks, there is no single universal protocol that all banks follow for third-party data access. This means that:

For rental property owners, these disruptions can be especially frustrating when you rely on accurate transaction data for expense tracking, financial reporting, and tax preparation.

If you bank with a major institution like Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo, you’ll likely experience fewer connection problems because these banks invest heavily in digital banking infrastructure. We cannot stress this point about the reliability of larger banks enough. On the other hand, smaller regional banks and credit unions, some of which are favored by rental property owners due to their lending flexibility, tend to be less stable for automated transaction syncing because:

If you frequently experience disruptions, consider whether your bank’s infrastructure, size, and brand recognition is likely to be suitable for reliable automated transaction imports over the long run. Stessa does not directly maintain data connections with external banking, mortgage, or credit card institutions. Our model relies on third party aggregators to provide these secure connections. Ultimately, Stessa does not decide how these third party aggregators allocate scarce resources across their backlog of broken connections.

We are constantly working with our banking data providers to monitor and flag connection issues. While we have some influence with our data aggregators, we have no control over their prioritization queue. Here’s what we do on our end:

At the end of the day, the reliability of your bank connection depends largely on the institution you choose. If seamless syncing is critical to you, selecting a well-supported bank is the obvious decision.

For rental property owners looking for a 100% reliable syncing experience, we recommend opening a Stessa Cash Management account. Since Stessa accounts are natively integrated with our platform, all transactions sync instantly and without interruption—ensuring your rental property finances are always accurate and up-to-date.

Alternatively, if you prefer to use an external bank account, we recommend opening an account with a major financial institution such as Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo. These banks have well-established APIs, making their connections significantly more stable compared to smaller regional banks and credit unions. While not 100% reliable, choosing a large, tech-forward bank can provide a much more reliable syncing experience with fewer disruptions.

If you’re looking for specific bank recommendations, we have found that the following institutions generally seem to deliver stable and reliable data platforms for third-party connections:

We appreciate your patience as we work with our data aggregation partners to improve the reliability of financial data connections for all Stessa customers.

Familiar names like Intuit, Acorns, Betterment, Expensify, Wave, and Venmo, along with most of the top US banks, lenders, and investment advisors have relationships with Plaid, Yodlee, and/or MoneyKit. Millions of consumers across thousands of tech platforms, including Stessa, now trust these data aggregators to access their financial data safely and securely.

Secure banking connections made through the Stessa platform are always a one-way street. No one (including you) has the ability to create an actual transaction, move funds, or otherwise alter your banking settings through the Stessa platform. Once connected, Stessa will only import transactions, which can then be edited and changed in the Stessa transactions ledger. Stessa will also report the current account balance for reference.

Any changes or edits made in Stessa will of course not be reflected in your actual bank accounts. This is a critical safety and security feature that largely eliminates the incentive for someone to try to gain access to your banking data through Stessa.

For enhanced safety and security, your login credentials are never stored on Stessa's servers. No one at Stessa can see your password. Instead, Yodlee and Plaid make the secure connection on your behalf and then deliver ongoing data feeds for as long as your credentials remain valid.

Sometimes the connections break, passwords, expire, and/or security questions change on the bank end of things. This can result in a broken connection and a requirement to update your login credentials in order to refresh transactions data. When this happens, we'll notify you via email and provide a link to restore your connection.

Plaid and Yodlee only allow data to be transmitted using strong TLS protocols and ciphers. Stessa communicates with these providers over encrypted tunnels and all connections require API key authentication, cryptographically hashed headers, and timestamps to verify authenticity. Both Plaid and Yodlee have extensive track records developing and maintaining industry-leading security protocols.

Both Plaid and Yodlee subject themselves to frequent network penetration testing and third-party code reviews by independent auditors. These regular audits are conducted by financial institutions and federal regulators, and are an integral part of how both services maintain their security infrastructures with the highest integrity.

Finally, Plaid and Yodlee are in full compliance with the Bank Services Company Act and other relevant industry standards and federal regulations. This helps ensure that Stessa's bank linking process and real-time data imports keep up with best practices in data transmittal and security infrastructure.

Once you've connected your accounts, you may notice that new transactions won't always appear in your Stessa account immediately. This is because Stessa waits for transactions to officially "post" before importing them, which eliminates the need to reconcile previously imported data. This is consistent with Stessa's "one-way street" approach in which data is imported exactly once and then fully available for editing in Stessa.

You can expect your data to refresh multiple times per day when the connection is working properly and new transactions to appear within 6-12 hours once "posted" on the bank side.

Yodlee Security Policies
​Plaid Security Policies
​Stessa Security Policies

​Stessa Support Center Articles:
​Linking Your Financial Accounts
​Troubleshooting Bank Connections
​Managing Data Sources

Related discussions on the Stessa Community Forum