Will you PLEASE stop saying this is encryption.  It is not.  It is obfuscation, and it is data destruction.  Encryption is a method of transmitting a message that ensures the message cannot be read by anyone other than the prearranged and intended recipient.  The point of encryption is that while the message is unreadable to an outsider, the actual transmitted data is recoverable, when the right decryption method is applied.  

Replacing every "encrypted" piece of data with the letter "X" is not encryption.  The data is not recoverable by any method whatsoever.  Stop misusing the language.  This is data destruction.  Obfuscation is a nicer word if you like, but this is NOT "encryption", so please stop using this word.

And the work-around of "Just manually upload your data" is very counter-productive, and short--sighted of Intuit and Chase (and now AMEX, apparently).    What happened to upgrades and updates not BREAKING things that previously worked.  Now, automatic download and Bank connections has become nearly useless, and automatic categorization is also damaged because the data has been destroyed.  Two thirds of my previously functional "Rules" are now useless.  Do we now advise all our clients with Chase Bank that they should stop using Chase?  or stop using QuickBooks?  Because this is quickly going to spiral into higher prices for doing bookkeeping.  "Well, you see, I have to manually enter all the Chase data by hand, you see, and it takes 150% longer to do."  

I have onel client who runs 4 businesses out of the same bank (Chase), and also has his personal checking account with Chase.  He frequently makes transfers between the different businesses and also makes contributions and transfers to and from his personal checking.  Previously I could easily classify these transfers based on the last four digits of the bank account included in the bank details.  Now they all contain exactly the same account number XXXX.  This is impossible to classify.  The data is not there any more.  I now have to either 1) open the bank website and look up each of the transactions manually using the date and amount to disambiguate them.  or 2) cease using the "Bank Connection" feature entirely for these accounts and go back to downloading the data from the bank manually as a csv file, post-processing it to make an acceptable format for QBO Import function, and proceeding from there.  Can anyone tell me why I should continue to use the "Bank Connection" feature fro Chase Bank, given this circumstance?  Has not QBO just become MUCH less valuable by this breaking of previously available functionality?

This is happening because Chase makes all data transfers run through a "third party" data transfer service that treats all data transfers the same.  QuickBooks and accounting services providers are treated exactly the same as "Android Game of the Month" transactions.  Do they seriously expect us to believe they could not have worked out a better solution than this?  Maybe this is because Intuit has moved into the payments arena.  I don't know.  But surely Chase could have arranged a different data delivery channel for accounting services vs payment services.  Whatever the case, it seems like no one at either of these giant companies actually cares what we think.  "Let them eat cake." didn't work out very well for Marie Antoinette.  And "Simply download the data directly from Chase." is not going to work out very well for Intuit.

Fixing this should be a priority for Chase and/or Intuit.  But it probably won't be.