Will JPMC Give QuickBooks Users The Cold Shoulder?

JPMorgan Chase is taking online security seriously — so much so that it will begin disabling customers’ access to their accounts through third-party software if they don’t take additional verification steps.

The bank sent a notice to a few hundred thousand customers on Monday (Nov. 23), reports The Wall Street Journal, informing them that users of desktop financial management applications, such as Intuit’s Quicken and QuickBooks, must log onto JPMorgan’s website and follow a series of instructions to confirm their identity in order to continue syncing their JPMorgan accounts with those services. Come Feb. 15, 2016, any applicable customers who have not taken such steps will no longer be able to access their account information through those services (though they will regain access if they remedy the situation).

A JPMorgan spokeswoman told WSJ that the increased security measures are part of an overhaul of the bank’s software that will expand its range of services to its customers — for one example, allowing them to link their credit and debit cards to Samsung Pay.

Intuit, for its part, also told the outlet through a spokeswoman that it was aware of the additional measures that JPMorgan was putting in place related to its financial management offerings.

The WSJ story puts forth the notion that JPMorgan’s new measures speak to the balance that banks are attempting to strike between allowing customers to utilize increasingly popular third-party financial management software in conjunction with their accounts, while keeping their own operations protected against data breaches.