Opened an account at coinbase years ago. Submitted my verification years ago. I remembered linking my BoA checking account and sending in my US passport to get verified. I have never ever deposited any funds from my BoA to coinbase nor have I ever withdraw anything from coinbase. I never even done a trade on coinbase ever.
However, not long ago, I sent some btc from my wallet to coinbase to keep it there. Thus just have some btc there on coinbase.
When I check my coinbase account now, when I click on Buy/Sell, it says
You're almost ready to buy. Please complete your account. To make an investment, please add a payment method
So I click on Bank account right? I see other options are paypal, debit card and wire transfers. But when I click on bank account, it wants to use Plaid to connect to my bank account? When I click on BoA, I am suppose to enter my BoA online banking information? If so, is that safe? But after doing this, then my bank account is added? I'm confused here because many years ago when I got verified, I remember verifying the same bank of america account years ago. So is this new and everyone need to do it? I do see the option of adding bank account manually where they make two deposits and you verify it but that takes up to 5 days. Does that work?
If the question still remains if it's safe, it is if you're not so scared of giving out your information and passing your KYC verification. Other than that, the process to me is legit. Everyone needs an easy way of moving his/her money without stress, just that when it becomes very hug, the government starts tracing your personal information and also using the bank/exchange as a big source of information. This is one of a major reason why processing KYC is not really the best.
That aside binance exchange was bringing forth such an idea which would have been accepted by it's users, but the government of my country placed a ban on it.
These are new features that are added to Coinbase. When I first started using Coinbase, it was just a wallet for receiving and storing of coins, and at then the coins where even limited as compared to now. So, lots of new things has been added to facilitate users experience.