On a somewhat related note, I recently added an external bank account to my E-trade account. They gave me two options for verifying it. The first was to make a

On a somewhat related note, I recently added an external bank account to my E-trade account. They gave me two options for verifying it. The first was to make a small deposit into the external account (which they said would take several days to complete). The second option was to provide my bank account's credentials and they could verify it immediately. I chose the first option.