00:00 Speaker A
The Federal Trade Commission found that Americans reported losing $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, affecting over 2.5 million people. So you want to be careful before sharing your bank information with any apps or services. Yahoo Finance personal finance reporter Cassie Bonds still with me to share some tips here. So, Cassie, um, what are you doing when you link your bank info to a payment service or app? What do we need to know about that?
00:47 Cassie Bonds
Right. So whether you’re using a budgeting app or a peer-to-peer payment service, um, or a digital wallet, um, linking your bank accounts means that you’re allowing those two different platforms to share information with each other. Um, what’s interesting is that generally these platforms don’t access your bank accounts directly. There’s typically a middleman of sorts. Um, two platforms that are pretty popular are Plaid and Yodlee, and what these do is they take the information from your bank accounts, share that information with the financial services platform, um, and encrypt that data so that your, um, username and account password and other sensitive information isn’t actually stored within the platform.
02:20 Speaker A
And what are some signs, I mean, you mentioned a couple of names, but what are some signs you’re dealing with a reputable service? And then what are some ways to keep your information safe?
02:46 Cassie Bonds
Sure. Well, there’s so many different tools and platforms out there. So it’s really important, first of all, to check that there are a lot of user reviews and that they’re generally positive. Um, and you want to investigate that platform’s particular security measures. Um, they should have things like encryption, multi-factor authentication. Um, and then you want to ensure that you’re not actually keeping money inside of those platforms. Say you use Venmo, for instance. The money in that account is not protected by the FDIC. So it’s really important not to hold a lot of money within these platforms and always transfer it to your bank account.
04:21 Speaker A
Um, Cassie, what are some of the benefits of linking your accounts?
04:36 Cassie Bonds
Well, obviously the biggest benefit is the convenience. Um, you know, if you need to pay back your friend, you don’t need to pull out cash or write a check. You can just send them the money. Um, it’s also great for financial planning. If you’re using a budgeting tool, it’s going to pull in that information, um, categorize everything for you. Uh, it’s going to be a lot more accurate and less time-consuming, so you can make really informed financial decisions without a lot of work.
05:26 Speaker A
And how about the risks of doing it?
05:35 Cassie Bonds
Sure. Well, a lot of these, um, platforms do have really robust security measures in place. There’s always that risk of a security breach or fraud. So, again, it’s really important to investigate, um, a platform before you decide to use it and connect your bank accounts and ensure that they have those really robust security measures in place. Um, and then you also want to avoid things like using public Wi-Fi that just makes you a little bit more susceptible to hacking. Um, and also make sure that your phone is password protected.
06:50 Speaker A
Man, I got to remember that public Wi-Fi one. I am guilty of that on occasion. Cassie, thank you so much. Appreciate it. And you can scan the QR code below for more banking content from Yahoo Finance.
