Plaid web hook not firing

Question

I'm trying to integrate Plaid transaction webhooks into an api, and seem to have trouble getting any webhooks to fire. I used the plaid quickstart code and added the webhook parameter:

Plaid.create({
    apiVersion: "v2",
    clientName: "Plaid Walkthrough Demo",
    env: "<%= PLAID_ENV %>",
    product: ["transactions", "auth"],
    webhook: "http://localhost:3000/api/plaid/webhook",
    key: "<%= PLAID_PUBLIC_KEY %>",//...

On the receiving end I'm just logging the req.body to see if webhook fired:

  app.post("/api/plaid/webhook", (req, res) => {
  console.log("WEBHOOK FIRED");
  console.log(JSON.stringify(req.body));
});

When I tested the route in Postman, the req.body was logged as expected, but when creating a new PLAID Item it's not working. I'm currently working in Sandbox mode

Answer 1

Wrote to Plaid support and the reason it didn't work is because localhost:3000 is not a valid URL. Once i tried it on an actual server it worked.

Answer 2

As you already found out yourself, localhost:3000 won't work since it's not public (visible to Plaid).

When I want to test webhooks locally, I typically user services like:

https://postb.in

https://webhook.site