How to Connect Your Bank to Monarch Money (2026 Step-by-Step Guide)

Connecting your accounts is the first real step in Monarch — every other feature (Cash Flow, Budget, Goals, AI Assistant, Sankey diagram) is built on the transaction stream from your linked institutions. Get this right once and the rest of the app starts paying for itself within a billing cycle. Get it wrong and you'll spend the next month chasing duplicate transactions and stale balances.

Here's the verified walkthrough — every step checked against Monarch's Help Center documentation, with the troubleshooting paths that actually fix connection problems.

The 30-second answer

To add a bank, credit card, brokerage, or retirement account to Monarch:

1. Open Monarch at app.monarchmoney.com (web) or launch the iOS/Android app.
2. Go to Accounts in the left navigation.
3. Click Add account at the top right (web) or tap the + icon (mobile).
4. Search for your institution by name or by website URL (e.g., type chase.com or americanexpress.com).
5. Pick the institution from the dropdown, then enter your bank login when prompted.
6. Approve any multi-factor authentication (security questions, SMS code, push notification, biometric) the bank asks for.
7. Select which accounts inside that institution you want Monarch to track.
8. Wait 1–3 minutes for transaction history to populate. (Monarch pulls anywhere from a few months up to a few years depending on your bank's data retention policy.)

That's it. Monarch supports more than 13,000 financial institutions through three data providers — Plaid, Finicity (owned by Mastercard), and MX — and defaults to whichever provider has the strongest connection to your specific bank.

What account types Monarch supports

If your bank isn't on Plaid, Finicity, or MX (rare for US institutions, more common for some Canadian banks and smaller credit unions), Monarch lets you create a manual account so it still appears in your net-worth calculations and budget.

Step 1: Get to the Add Account screen

The location is identical across platforms but the affordance differs:

• Web (app.monarchmoney.com): Click Accounts in the left sidebar. The Add account button sits at the top right of the Accounts page.
• Mobile (iOS/Android): Tap Accounts in the bottom tab bar. Tap the + icon at the top right.

The Add Account modal opens with a search box and a list of popular institutions below it.

Step 2: Search for your bank — by name or by website URL

Monarch's search supports two input modes, and the URL approach is the more reliable one when there's any ambiguity:

• By name: Type Chase and you'll see "Chase Bank," "JPMorgan Chase," and any third-party login portals Chase customers might use (some 401(k) providers piggy-back on Chase login).
• By website URL: Type chase.com or americanexpress.com to disambiguate. This is what Monarch's documentation explicitly recommends if a search by name shows multiple confusing matches.

The URL approach matters more than people realize. American Express, for example, has a dozen branded card portals that all look slightly different in the search dropdown — typing americanexpress.com jumps you straight to the canonical AmEx connection.

Step 3: Authenticate with your bank

When you click an institution in the dropdown, Monarch hands you off to one of its three data providers (Plaid, Finicity, or MX). The provider opens a branded modal with your bank's login flow:

1. Enter your bank username and password — the same credentials you use to log in to your bank's website directly. (Monarch never sees these — they go to Plaid/Finicity/MX, which encrypt them and pass the connection token back to Monarch as read-only.)
2. Approve any multi-factor authentication the bank requires:
3. SMS one-time code
4. Email one-time code
5. Push notification to your bank's app
6. Security questions
7. Biometric (Touch ID / Face ID, if you're connecting from the same device as your bank app)
8. Some banks (Chase notably) require an explicit app authorization screen where you'd approve "JPMorgan Chase Aggregator Service" sharing data with Monarch via the data provider. Approve it.

If you have 2FA enabled at your bank (and you should), this step takes 30–60 seconds. If you don't, it's near-instant.

Step 4: Pick which accounts inside that institution to track

Most institutions hold multiple accounts under a single login — checking + savings + credit card at Chase, for example, or a 401(k) + IRA + brokerage at Fidelity. Monarch lists all of them and lets you toggle which ones you want to import.

We recommend importing all of them, even ones you barely use. You can hide an account from the dashboard later, but having the connection live means transfers between accounts auto-categorize correctly and your net-worth picture stays accurate.

Step 5: Wait for transaction history to populate

Once the connection completes, Monarch starts pulling transaction history. This is where most users see the longest delay — anywhere from 30 seconds to about 3 minutes depending on the institution and how much history the bank exposes through its aggregator API.

Per Monarch's documentation, the amount of history you get varies by bank. Some institutions hand over just 30–60 days, while others provide several years. There's no universal standard — the bank decides.

If you want a longer history than the bank gives you, Monarch supports manual upload of balance and transaction history via CSV. Useful for pre-Monarch year-over-year comparisons; tedious if you're starting fresh.

Manual accounts: when (and how) to use them

If your institution isn't supported — or it's connected but constantly drops the link — Monarch's manual account is the escape hatch. From the Add Account screen, scroll to the bottom and select Add manual account.

You'll choose:

• Account type — Cash, Credit Card, Loan, Investments, Real Estate, Vehicle, Other Asset, Other Liability
• Account name — whatever you want to call it
• Starting balance — current value
• Currency (Monarch supports USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, and a long list of others)

After creation, you update the balance manually whenever you want — typically once a month after the statement closes. Manual transactions can also be added one-off if you want to track activity inside the account.

Common cases for a manual account:

• A private mortgage or family loan with no online portal
• Store-brand credit cards (some Best Buy / Macy's cards don't aggregate well)
• Foreign bank accounts (Plaid/Finicity/MX coverage outside US/Canada is thin)
• Cash you keep at home
• Physical assets — collectibles, art, jewelry, vehicles
• A brokerage that's been disconnecting weekly because of bank-side throttling

For investment-type manual accounts specifically, Monarch supports manual investment holdings — you enter the tickers you own (stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, crypto) and Monarch pulls live prices automatically. Your account balance updates with the market even though the underlying account itself is manual. Useful for self-directed brokerages that don't aggregate cleanly.

Special account types worth a separate note

Three account types behave differently from the standard "find your bank, log in" flow:

Real estate — Monarch tracks home value through Zillow's Zestimate algorithm. You enter your address and Zillow's estimated market value flows in automatically. If you'd rather use your own appraisal number, create a manual account instead.

Vehicles — Cars and other vehicles use Vinaudit for valuation. Enter VIN or year/make/model and Monarch pulls the depreciation curve. Same caveat as Zillow — the number is algorithmic, not gospel.

Company equity / RSUs — Monarch added a Company Equity account type that handles stock options, RSUs, and private-company shares. You can upload grant documents and Monarch will parse the vesting schedule, then track the value of vested-vs-unvested shares over time. This was added in 2025 and is one of the more polished implementations in the budgeting-app space — most competitors require a manual workaround for equity comp.

Updating an existing connection

When a connection breaks (it will eventually — banks rotate authentication, OAuth tokens expire, MFA settings change), the fix is the same regardless of the data provider:

1. Go to Accounts → click the institution name → open Institution Settings
2. Click the "..." (three dots) menu next to the institution
3. Select Update login settings
4. Re-enter your bank login and step through the MFA again

This refreshes the OAuth token and restarts the sync. Monarch documents that some banks require this monthly; others go a year between re-auths. Chase has historically been on the more aggressive side (every 60–90 days), per the Chase-specific link-settings article in Monarch's Help Center.

You can also use Update login settings to add newly opened accounts at the same institution. If you opened a new credit card after your initial sync, this is how you pull it in.

Choosing a different data provider

Monarch defaults to whichever data provider has the strongest connection record for your specific bank. But if a connection keeps dropping or won't go through, you can manually pick a different provider:

1. From the Add Account search results, click Choose a different data provider at the bottom of the institution dropdown
2. Pick from the available providers (Plaid, Finicity, MX) for that bank
3. Walk through the auth flow with the alternate provider

Banks vary wildly in how they treat the three providers. Some institutions are rock-solid on Plaid but flaky on MX. Some are the reverse. If your first attempt with the default provider fails or keeps re-prompting for auth, a different provider is often the fix.

Connection troubleshooting (verified from Monarch's Help Center)

These are the documented fixes for the seven most common connection failures, paraphrased from Monarch's "My account won't connect, what do I do?" article:

Adding an account fails on the first try

• Try a different browser, or switch from web to the mobile app (or vice versa)
• Verify you're picking the correct institution — search by URL (chase.com) instead of name to disambiguate
• Confirm you can log in to your bank's website directly. If the bank's own login is broken or maintenance-down, Monarch can't auth either.

"Your credentials are wrong" but you're sure they aren't

• Open a new tab, log in to your bank successfully, then retry in Monarch — sometimes bank-side rate limiting causes false credential failures
• If your bank is connected via Plaid and you recently changed your username at the bank, you must add the connection as new — Plaid doesn't support username updates inline. Use Monarch's transfer history tool to merge the old account into the new connection so you don't lose history.
• Wait 24 hours. Bank-side temporary errors clear themselves overnight more often than not.

Generic "connection error"

• Same trio: login successfully on the bank's website, wait 24 hours, try a different data provider
• Check Monarch's connection status messaging article for institution-specific known issues

You're prompted to reconnect every few weeks

• Some banks require frequent re-auth as a security policy — this isn't a Monarch bug, it's the bank's choice
• If it's becoming intolerable, switch to a different data provider (some providers refresh more gracefully than others for the same bank)

You're not receiving security codes

• Confirm you can receive them when logging in to your bank directly first
• Reset your contact info at the bank if needed
• Try a different data provider — some providers route MFA differently

MFA is enabled at your bank and the connection won't proceed

• Some banks have a setting that disables third-party app access entirely. Look in your bank's online security settings for a "Third-party access" or "App permissions" toggle.
• Apple Card, Apple Cash, and Apple Savings have a special connection flow — see Monarch's dedicated Apple Card article.

You need a second login at the same bank (e.g., personal + business)

• This is supported. The flow varies by data provider; Plaid in particular has specific instructions covered in Monarch's "I need to add a second connection for the same financial institution using Plaid" article.

If none of the above works, Monarch's support team is genuinely responsive — historically faster than any competitor we've tested. Email support and they'll usually escalate to the data provider on your behalf.

How Monarch's connection breadth compares

Monarch's edge is the three-provider redundancy. When Plaid loses a connection at your bank, MX often still works — and Monarch's dropdown shows you that fallback explicitly. Single-provider apps (most of the field) don't have that redundancy. The one app with broader connection breadth is Empower, which uses Yodlee — but Empower's tradeoff is that its budgeting tools are weaker (it's primarily an investment-tracking and net-worth app).

If you're specifically choosing between Monarch and a competitor on connection reliability, our deeper takes are in Monarch vs YNAB, Monarch vs Rocket Money, and Monarch vs Copilot Money.

Security: how Monarch and the data providers handle your bank credentials

This question comes up in nearly every conversation about Monarch, so the short version: Monarch never sees your bank login credentials. When you click a bank in the search dropdown, you're handed off to Plaid, Finicity, or MX — three companies that each have their own SOC 2 Type 2 audits, their own bug bounty programs, and their own encryption infrastructure. Your bank login goes to the data provider, not to Monarch.

Monarch receives a read-only token in exchange. The token can pull transaction data and balances, but it can't initiate transfers, change settings at your bank, or access anything beyond what you authorized. If you ever revoke Monarch's access at your bank's website, the token is cut off and Monarch loses the connection cleanly.

Per Monarch's own security documentation:

• All three data providers maintain SOC 2 Type 2 reports
• API traffic is encrypted in transit and at rest
• Role-based access controls at every layer
• Regular third-party penetration testing
• Active bug-bounty programs (Plaid's in particular is one of the largest in fintech)

This is the same security posture Mint used (Mint was an Intuit product that primarily used Yodlee), and it's the standard for the entire personal-finance-aggregator category. There isn't a more secure way to aggregate accounts that doesn't require you to manually enter every transaction.

If you're privacy-sensitive enough that even read-only aggregation feels like too much exposure, manual accounts — covered above — are the alternative. You give up automation but keep zero credentials shared.

Frequently asked questions

Does Monarch sell my data?

No. Monarch's been explicit about this in their public privacy commitments — they're a subscription-funded product, not an ad-funded or data-broker product. The previous generation of free aggregators (Mint specifically) made money by selling targeted ads inside the app and offering pre-screened credit card recommendations. Monarch's revenue model is just the $99.99/year subscription (or $49.99 with the SMARTMONEY code).

Do I need to keep my accounts connected for the budget to work?

Yes — the budget calculations rely on real transaction streams. You can use manual accounts and update them periodically, but the budget becomes much more labor-intensive. Connected accounts are what make Monarch valuable.

What if my bank goes down or Plaid has an outage?

Monarch keeps your last-synced data and shows a connection-error indicator on the affected accounts. New transactions don't come through until the connection recovers, but historical data and your budget remain intact. You can also manually upload transactions during outages if you need real-time accuracy.

Can I share connections with my partner?

Yes — Monarch's Shared Views feature is designed for couples. Both partners get full visibility into the same connected accounts under one Core subscription. This is one of Monarch's strongest competitive advantages over YNAB (which charges separately for two users) and Copilot (which doesn't yet support real shared accounts).

Why do some banks need re-authentication every month?

It's the bank's choice, not Monarch's. Larger institutions with stricter security policies (Chase being a frequent example, per Monarch's own Chase-specific Help Center article) require periodic re-auth to maintain the OAuth token. This is annoying but is consistent across every aggregator that connects to Chase, including Mint historically.

How long does the initial sync take?

Typically 30 seconds to 3 minutes per institution. Heavy investment accounts with hundreds of holdings (large 401(k)s, brokerages with many positions) can take longer — up to 10 minutes in extreme cases.

What's a "data provider" and why does Monarch use three?

Plaid, Finicity, and MX are the three big bank-aggregation companies in the US. Each has direct or screen-scraped relationships with thousands of banks, and the relationships overlap but aren't identical. Some banks work cleanly through Plaid but not MX; others are the reverse. Monarch using all three gives you the best chance any specific bank works on the first try.

I'm in Canada — does Monarch support Canadian banks?

Yes, with caveats. The big six Canadian banks (RBC, TD, Scotiabank, BMO, CIBC, National) and the major credit unions are supported, but coverage is thinner than the US and certain banks (especially smaller credit unions) require manual accounts. Monarch maintains a separate Canadian Connection Statuses help article showing per-bank reliability.

What about international banks?

Limited. Monarch supports US and Canadian institutions natively. UK, EU, and Australian banks generally require manual accounts. If your financial life spans multiple countries, expect to use manual accounts for everything outside North America.

If you want a passive alternative that focuses on subscription tracking and bill negotiation rather than full budgeting, Rocket Money covers similar account-connection breadth with a simpler interface. If you want the strictest budgeting discipline, YNAB takes a different approach (zero-based, every dollar a job). For deeper comparisons, see our Monarch vs YNAB review and Rocket Money vs Monarch comparison.

Related reading:

• Monarch Money Review 2026
• Is Monarch Money Worth It?
• How to Create a Budget in Monarch
• How to Share Finances With a Partner in Monarch
• How to Use Monarch's AI Assistant
• How to Track Subscriptions in Monarch
• How to Set Financial Goals in Monarch
• Monarch vs YNAB
• Monarch vs Copilot Money
• Best Mint Alternatives in 2026

Not financial, legal, or tax advice. We earn a commission if you sign up for Monarch through a link on this page; the price is the same and the editorial content is unaffected by the commission. Every step in this guide is verified against Monarch's official Help Center documentation as of May 7, 2026.