How BankSync finds your bank

When you type a bank name into BankSync, you are searching a catalog BankSync builds and maintains itself. This page explains where that catalog comes from, why one bank sometimes offers more than one way to connect, and how BankSync decides which one to put on the big button.

Where the list comes from#

BankSync connects to banks through several data providers. Most of them publish a list of the institutions they can reach, and every night BankSync fetches each of those lists in full. A few — MX and Finicity, which BankSync reaches through Quiltt — publish no list at all; for those, a bank enters the catalog the first time someone successfully connects it, so every one of their entries is a bank a real person actually reached.

Those lists disagree with each other constantly. The same bank appears under slightly different names, with different logos, sometimes split across several entries. So the raw provider lists are not what you search. Every night, after fetching, BankSync files each provider's entries under a single bank — one entry per bank, per country — using whatever evidence is strongest:

1. A routing number. Issued by a regulator, and the one identifier two providers cannot disagree about.
2. A shared identifier, where a provider issues one we can trust across more than one connection.
3. The bank's website domain.
4. The name, last — and never on its own without a person looking at it.

That last rule matters more than it sounds. Hundreds of German co-operative banks share one website domain, and plenty of unrelated banks share a name. Merging those automatically would send you to another bank's login page, so BankSync files them for review instead of guessing.

Why one bank can offer several ways to connect#

Some banks — particularly in the United States — are reachable through more than one of BankSync's providers. When that happens, the bank's page shows each one as its own option, plus a recommended choice at the bottom.

They are not interchangeable. Providers differ in which accounts they can see, how far back their transaction history goes, how their login flow works, and how reliably they stay connected to that particular bank. Two of them can be excellent at different banks.

How the recommendation is chosen#

BankSync recommends the option most likely to work for that specific bank, not the one that works best in general. Four things go into it:

• How often connections to this bank through this provider succeed. Counted from real attempts, and weighted so recent weeks matter more than old ones.
• How well existing connections to this bank through this provider keep working after the first login — a provider that connects easily and then breaks a week later is not the better option.
• What the provider says about the bank's status, where it publishes one.
• What people have told us. If you report that a connection will not work, that report counts.

A bank with only a handful of attempts behind it is not judged on those few attempts. BankSync falls back to how that provider performs overall, so a newly-listed bank starts from a sensible position rather than from noise.

Occasionally BankSync will recommend an option with less history than the leader, to find out whether it is actually better. This never happens across different kinds of connection — an open-banking connection you consent to and a provider that signs in on your behalf are different things, and BankSync will not swap one for the other to run an experiment.

You can always ignore the recommendation. Every available option is listed, and picking a different one is one click.

If your bank is not there#

• Check the country selector. The catalog is per-country, and the same bank can be listed under a market you are not currently searching.
• Try the bank's website address or its routing number. Both are searched, not just the name.
• Try a shorter query. BankSync matches on partial words, so common finds Commonwealth Bank, but a full legal name with punctuation can be narrower than the way the provider spells it.
• Tell us. If it is genuinely missing, let support know which bank and which country. Some banks are reachable through a provider we have not yet listed, and a request is what gets one prioritised.