Troubleshooting Transactions

API error responses

If the problem you're encountering involves an API error message, see Errors for troubleshooting suggestions.

No transactions or cursor returned

When calling /transactions/sync, a response with no cursor or transactions data is returned.

Common causes

This is expected behavior when the Item has recently been initialized with transactions and Plaid has not yet completed fetching of transactions data.

Listen for the SYNC_UPDATES_AVAILABLE webhook and call /transactions/sync again after it has been received. Note that you will need to call /transactions/sync at least once on an Item to activate the SYNC_UPDATES_AVAILABLE webhook.

Wait a minute or two and try the /transactions/sync call again.

Missing transactions

Common causes

The institution is experiencing an error.
Processing of the transactions has been delayed.
The Item is not in a healthy state.
The transaction is not available on the institution's online banking portal, or appears differently on the online banking portal.

Troubleshooting steps

Check the Plaid status page for any known system-wide outages.

Check the institution status via the Plaid developer dashboard or the /institutions/get_by_id endpoint. A degraded status indicates that the issue is known to Plaid and under investigation.

Ensure that the Item is not in an error state by examining the error returned by the failing endpoint, or making an /item/get request to get more information. If the Item is in an error state, see the error guide for the specific error that was encountered.

Ask the user to ensure that the given transaction is visible in the institution's online banking portal. Other sources, such as paper statements, should not be used as the source of truth to compare to Plaid data. Also verify that the transaction is not being reported under a different description. Plaid cleans and standardizes transaction data, so it is possible for a transaction to be returned that does not have the exact description provided by the bank.

Wait two business days and try calling /transactions/sync or /transactions/get again.

If the steps above do not resolve the issue, file a ticket with Plaid support.

Incorrect data fields

In some cases, information about a merchant, such as its name or category, may be incorrect.

Troubleshooting steps

If the name field is incorrect, try the merchant_name field, or vice-versa. The merchant_name field has a higher level of processing applied to the raw transaction data and may be more likely to match your users' expectations of transaction data.

If the issue is not resolved, or if the category information is incorrect, file a ticket with Plaid support indicating which fields are incorrect, the correct data, and the transaction_id of the affected transaction.