Ask HN: What's the simplest way for me to get my AMEX data agentically?
A Hacker News user asks for the simplest way to reliably retrieve their American Express statements and transactions agentically. They found Amex's developer API but believe it's for B2B apps, and they note warnings that Amex frequently forces re-authentication via Plaid, making a set-and-forget setup unreliable. The user also asks whether Plaid is a free option.
Background
- The user wants to programmatically pull their own Amex transactions for personal finance tracking. They found Amex's "Agentic Payments" API, but that's for B2B merchants processing payments, not for individual cardholders.
- Plaid is a data-aggregation service that connects apps to financial accounts. It is not free for direct use (apps pay Plaid per connection). Some budgeting apps (Monarch, YNAB) use Plaid and pass the cost to the user via subscription.
- Amex is notoriously difficult to automate: it requires frequent MFA re-authentication, Plaid connections break silently and often, and there's no official consumer API. "Set-and-forget" scripts tend to fail without warning.
- Common workarounds: manual CSV download from Amex's web portal; screen-scraping (fragile, terms-of-service risk); or using a budgeting app that handles the re-auth headache. None are truly agentic and reliable.