Compound uses Plaid — the same connection layer used by Venmo, Robinhood, Wise, and most other consumer finance apps — to securely link your bank.
What Happens When You Connect
- Open Accounts → Add account from inside the app.
- A Plaid window opens. You enter your bank credentials there — never directly in Compound.
- Plaid gives us a limited access token. We use it to read your account balances and transactions.
What We Receive
- Account names + the last four digits of account numbers (no full numbers).
- Current and available balances.
- Transaction history (merchant, amount, date, category).
- Account type and institution name.
What Plaid Never Shares with Us
- Your bank username or password.
- Full account or routing numbers.
- Your Social Security number.
How Updates Work
Plaid notifies us automatically when new transactions are available — usually within a few hours of a swipe clearing. You don't have to refresh anything for transactions to appear. Balances also update along with each transaction sync. There's a manual Refresh balancebutton on the Accounts page for the rare case you want an immediate balance check; it's rate-limited and intelligently skips a Plaid call if the data is already current.
Disconnecting
Go to Accounts and click Disconnect on the institution. This revokes our access token, stops further data retrieval, and removes the connected accounts from your view. You can also manage app connections at my.plaid.com to revoke at the Plaid level.
If a Connection Breaks
Banks occasionally require re-authentication (a password change, a 2FA challenge, a long idle period). When that happens you'll see a yellow banner at the top of the portal with a Reconnect button. Click it and walk through the Plaid prompt again — your transaction history is preserved.