Plaid /accounts/get givens a different account_id in Sandbox resulting in duplicate accounts

Question

Developing a prototype and in process of solving for the use case when the user selects the same bank twice /accounts/get returns different account_id for the list of accounts. What is the process for handling of the use case when the account_id changes?

Same account_ids for all the accounts.

Answer 1

This sounds like a case of a duplicate Item. The best way to deal with this situation is to avoid having it happen in the first place, because it can lead to higher Plaid API bills or to confusing behavior in your app. Plaid's documentation has a detailed list of recommendations to avoid duplicate Items, the primary method being to compare the data from the onSuccess callback against existing Items to check against existing Items:

https://plaid.com/docs/link/duplicate-items/

If you do end up with a duplicate Item, you should delete one of the Items with /item/remove.