Listen to this articleEveryone has heard of the investment app called Acorns. It’s similar to Betterment and Motif. Acorns monitors your bank transactions and rounds up each transaction to the nearest dollar. When the round-up reaches the threshold of $5.00, it transfers it to their firm, where they invest in diversified, Exchange-Traded Funds or ETFs.
As of the 26th of November, round-up stopped and my linked round-up account needed to be reverified. Basically what that means is it asks me to log in using the username and password that I use to log into my Bank’s portal and reinitialize the link between Acorns and my bank.
The problem I’m having is, Acorns keeps asking me to enter a code I’m suppose to receive by text after putting in the username and password that I use for my Bank’s online portal. I never receive any code.
The people at my bank seems a little technologically illiterate when it comes to 3rd party technology than what they offer by their official banking app. They’re restricting access to technology that’s available for everyone to use regardless of how secure it is either because they refuse to allow customers to use it because of fear of security or just to restrict access because they don’t understand it.
I’ve spoke with Customer Service with Acorns and was told that the code request was a general error message and went on to say that it is like if the app says my username or password is incorrect, usually they aren’t but it is a linking issue that Acorns is having with a financial institution and not a problem with the data entered. The representative said that if the bank hasn’t asked for a code in the past, that they wouldn’t change it now.
How can this be a general error message? It’s specific. I never receive a code and my phone number is correct in both my Bank’s portal and in the Acorns portal. And Bank’s are all the time updating security features to prevent fraud, so the last statement the representative gave was false. Generally, maybe they wouldn’t without warning, but I didn’t receive any email about updated security measures from Acorns or my bank.
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