Why doesn't MoneyWell support direct connect banking with my bank when online services seem to work?

MoneyWell talks directly to OFX servers and not all banks and financial institutions have one of these servers. This is a very standardized and secure method of retrieving your financial data and all your financial information is stored on your local computer.

Online services like Mint, Mvelopes and Wesabe or software like Quicken Essentials pretend to be you, login to the financial institutions website and scrape your information off your financial institutions webpage. This allows broad support for many websites but requires teams of web developers and doesn't collect as much information as a true direct connect conversation.

These services also require that your financial information be stored on a server somewhere on the internet (often called the cloud). But not only your financial information is stored, your login name and password and your answers to your security questions are saved in the cloud as well. Some people are comfortable with this kind of exposure and others are not.

MoneyWell never stores any of your information anywhere but on your local computer. MoneyWell talks to the No Thirst Software server only to retrieve the OFX connection information for the financial institutions, which has nothing to do with your private data.