Hi John,

My only issue is with your criticism of OFX security. OFX is not "completely insecure" and there is encryption.

FWIW, we still pull transactions regularly from four financial institutions in the US.

Regards,

Sherlock


On 11/30/25 1:28 PM, John Ralls wrote:


On Nov 30, 2025, at 2:43 AM, Carl Ponder via gnucash-user 
<[email protected]> wrote:


I'm running GnuCash 5.13 on Ubuntu 24.04 using the command

   /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=gnucash
   --file-forwarding org.gnucash.GnuCash @@ %f @@

and trying to automatically download the transactions from my checking account 
at Charles Schwab and VISA transactions from Bank of America.
Using the menu

   Apps -> Office -> GnuCash -> Accounts -> Charles Schwab -> Tools ->
   Online Banking Setup -> Start AqBanking Setup -> Create User ->
   Select a Bank

I get a pane where I can enter the name "Charles Schwab" or "Bank of America", 
but then it just hangs.
Also the letters show up slowly in the pane, it looks like it's trying to do a 
lookup as I type, but not getting anything.
This page here

   https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Setting_up_OFXDirectConnect

mentions a https://www.ofxhome.com/  database, but as far as I can tell, this 
URL doesn't exist.
Does GnuCash actually support online banking?

Not significantly in the USA. The one protocol we support, OFX Direct Connect, 
is completely insecure and so very few (maybe no) banks still offer it. The 
replacements are proprietary and require corporate vetting to license so it’s 
not possible for either GnuCash or AqBanking to implement them.

Accordingly I’ve replaced 
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Setting_up_OFXDirectConnect with a tombstone page 
and put a header at the top of 
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings declaring that 
it’s of historical interest only.

That pane where you enter the name and click a button to look up the bank does depend 
on ofxhome.com <http://ofxhome.com/> that no longer exists so you could set up 
OFX Direct Connect manually if you had a bank that did still support it. I can tell 
you categorically that neither Charles Schwab nor BofA do (nor does BNY Mellon, the 
bank that Schwab uses for their cash sweeps).

Regards,
John Ralls


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