I can transfer from my checking account into IB, of course using my bank's infrastructure. I can direct deposit my paycheck into IB, using my employer's payroll provider infrastructure of course. But I can't link my IB account like a regular old brokerage/checking account like I can do at Fidelity or any other mainstream brokerage and it's annoying AF (to use the parlance of our times). Does IB have any plans to partner with a bank (like UMB for instance) to provide basic conveniences like direct ACH in/out of customer accounts? It's 2021 and the quickest way to move money from Fidelity to IB is to login to IB, submit a "notification" that I'm going to send $XXXX via BillPay, then login to Fidelity and go to their BillPay (like I'm paying my GD cable bill or something) and send a bill payment for $XXXX to IB. The fact that I have to notify IB of the amount ahead of time leads me to conclude that there's some manual process on IB's end that goes like "oh, we received $XXXX in bill payment, let me look up which clients notified us of this... uh huh, hmmm. oh, here it is, found it, ok I'll credit this account". It's ridiculous. Moving money is easy as pie at even the tiniest podunk credit union, why is it so manual and backward still at IB, a place that in many areas professes to embrace cutting edge automation? If one were only exposed to the deposit/withdraw system they'd think they were dealing with some crap bank run out of a garage. I'm not being over the top here, google will show many people are completely like "WTF is this crap?!" when they first encounter this system after opening an account. Christ, fix it already, put on your big boy pants and get with the times, certainly have the assets to be better than some hillbilly volunteer fire department credit union. <steps down from soap box>
"Hillbilly volunteer fire department credit unions" will give you 1000% more value than Wall Street firms. If you don't get that, you're one of them "pigs that get roasted". I'm an IB user by the way. Just use them for what they're good at.
You can link your bank account to your IB account and use ACH for deposit and withdraws from IB and I actually find the process not too bad but no you cannot link your trading account at IB to your banks simply because IB is not a bank nor does it ever wants to become one. It wants to remain a discount broker. You can do this at Fidelity because even though it's not a bank but it is a full-service financial management service company that provides a variety of financial services anything from mutual funds to insurance so it has the infrastructure in place for electronic payments. Think of IB as RobinHood but with longer years in existence. If you can't link RH accounts to your bank accounts, then you won't be able to with IB.
Took me 2 minutes to hook up my MM checking at Wells Fargo. Also there is more at play here than "easy of use". The compliance department oversees a lot. Money laundering is a real thing. To wit, they got fined recently for not overseeing money moving about. And "all those people" tend to equate trading with retail purchasing. They want ease of use and feel entitled to refunds and do overs when something goes wrong. This is trading, so they need to "put their big boy pants on", not the other way around. Sorry, if that sounds harsh, but so many people are pretty much newbies and clueless on what it takes to run IBs level of operations.
%% Good points. NOT that its 1000% or anywhere near that /LOL BUT lots of locals /banks/gun dealers give free coffee.OR @ least did preVirus.................................................................................. [And not to promote local saving accounts to much\but there are a lot of restictions on local bank saving accounts /but seldom are they actually as hard to withdraw as they could be.....................................................................]
Yeah, their model is to automate everything and deal with nothing. That's a horrible match with retail folks using their brokerage account like a checking account. For you and them.
The latest problem with IB is they decided you can’t withdraw money to more than 3 destination banks. So if you have another brokerage or two that you might want to send funds to, or couple of bank accounts, pretty soon you’re out of slots. This is a recent, customer unfriendly policy no doubt related to whatever compliance fines they for hit with. For a broker that’s trying to get you to use billpay and debit cards and such linked to your account so they have be your financial hub, they’re not doing a very good job of it.
%% But not near as horrible to not have any limits,on the number of banks one could withdraw money to. THAT would increase risk+ could easily turn into unlimited risk[unlimited # of banks = unlimited risk] I wonder if these brokerages get interest on SEC fees before they pay the SEC, i assume quarterly payments????