Banking apps seem to be a motif among things that don’t play well with privacy ROMs. My bank’s website does everything I could want out of it. I think I might be ignorant to something.
- What about banking apps is especially compelling?
- How often do banks put must-have features behind an app?
- And should I be concerned that banks might move away from offering services through browsers?
Depositing checks is about the only useful thing I’ve seen on my local bank’s app, but that only matters if you do business stuff with people who pay with checks.
Notifications and Mobile Deposit are the 2 features from banking apps that I find compelling.
Can’t do anything about mobile deposits, but for notifications, you could get the notifications emailed to you and your email app has push notifications.
Bold of you to assume my email app has push notifications
- A sad Proton user using a de-Googled device
Actually, I am in that exact same situation, so I know exactly what you’re talking about.
I wouldn’t want bank notifications emailed to me. Maybe a notification that I have a notification, but no real content. Email is incredibly insecure.
Depends on the bank and what kind of notifications you want.
Some banks only allow certain types of notifications to occur through the app.Yeah, that is a good point.
I mean, they could offer it through the browser. All modern browsers have more than enough hooks and permissions control to do something as simple as take a couple pictures and make a basic request to a back end.
Though making nice things costs money, so…
i worked on someone’s laptop recently that was set up for mobile deposits via web browser. they also had a bank-provided scanner, too, that worked with it. so it is possible, and it is being done.
Oh, of course they could do so, but they won’t do it because they want you to use their app. They want you to use their app because they control it and can mine data from it more so than on a web browser. Take Cime, for example. It has all kinds of Google trackers in it.
I’ve never used a banking app and I do quite a bit of business with multiple banks.
2FA must be done through the damn app. It’s TOTP (six digit) but locked behind god knows what. I asked for alternatives and they looked me like I was a caveman.
When they give you that QR code for the 2FA app, print it out and file it away. That is the seed.
That would tempt me to dump a backup with adb and rifle through the app data to find the seed
Cashing checks and zelle are the big ones
Same here, mobile check deposit and Zelle are literally the only things I’ve ever needed a bank app for.
I used to never use Zelle for anything but too many friends/family want to use some sort of app for exchanging money & that’s usually what we settle on. And my old landlord wanted rent paid via Zelle so that was another thing that forced me to install a bank app for Zelle purposes.
Mobile check deposit is a requirement when dealing with a bank without any locations nearby. In practice I only need to use that once a year or so, checks are kind of rare nowadays unless you’re a business owner with clients/customers paying with checks.
Zelle is sketchy even when compared to other cash transfer apps. They do a lot of freezing people’s money. Don’t use them if you have any other option.
Do you have some examples?
I use Zelle almost exclusively for my business and I have never had an issue with it.
I’ve never used a mobile banking app. Been using smartphones since they became generally available. I don’t need any payment apps and I generally don’t do anything important on my cellphone except for communications.
I don’t use them and haven’t missed them. I see one of my local branches has ripped out its outdoor ATM’s though. Wonder if that’s related to moving stuff to apps.
The only time I’ve willingly used a banking app is when they lock out my VPN IP. In those cases the app still usually works for whatever reason. So far, I haven’t found any functionality missing from the webapp, but I’m also dealing with brick and mortar institutions.
I would be concerned as they will eventually probably move to a phone app first ecosystem, however it will probably take a while. Some people are still only using in person and phone banking (where you call them and punch in numbers).
They are important.
In need to use them on the go so it’s a must have.
I think your largest banks like your Wells Fargo’s and Chase and Discover, etc. are going to take quite a long time to move to app only stuff if ever. However, newer entrants such as chime do lock functionality behind their app and make their websites really terrible. So I would avoid those.
My bank’s 2FA works only via their app or via SMS. For SMS I would have to pay per each received SMS.
The app perfectly works without safetynet, with microG, rooted with magisk but hidden by zygisk, so I’m lucky. At one update they added a popup at start after login about asking to add my card to Google Wallet (or whatever it’s called nowadays), and it’s not implemented in MicroG, so I can’t open it since that version. I just downgraded to the last working version and blacklisted its upgrades in Aurora, and I hope they won’t block my old version in the near future.
It’s a very progressive small local bank, I will contact them about this issue if they block my old version to make that dialog optional.
In Finland, extremely.
The banks here provide digital ID verification online. You use it to log into tax services, the national health-care database, to apply for schools, other education-related stuff, apply for welfare, register trade names… etc. The list goes on and on.
Stuff you’d otherwise have to personally visit or mail documents to offices of various government institutions for, can be done extremely smoothly online.
With my bank, the app is used for one of the verification steps. When verifying your identity online, you need to authorize the login from the app by entering a PIN from memory when prompted. There are alternatives but this is by far the most convenient.
The same banking app also notifies me the second any money comes into or leaves any of my accounts. No transactions can occur without my knowing. It lets me know when I receive my pay, or when an electronic invoice comes in (power, phone bills, etc. come right into the app), gets automatically paid, or when explicit authorization is needed due to one being irregular.
Most of the services my bank provides can be accessed via browser, but the stuff above is the kind you can’t achieve in a browser.
Honestly OP Pohjolas app is so feature-rich I’ve been able to pretty much set it up to run my finances for me. All I do is keep an eye on my accounts to make sure things are going right.
I remember when I got here it was a nightmare for the first few months when I didn’t have strong auth. It took several months to open a bank account and you basically can’t do anything without that stuff
Pretty much. Helping my grandmother deal with misplacing or forgetting her login details has been hell a couple times.
It’s extremely convenient when just go about your life with it already on hand, but for obvious reasons the security measures are extreme and it’s a pain to set up or recover your id.
Can confirm. On top of all that, the app is way more intuitive to use than the website.
Mobile check deposit is the only thing I want from my bank’s app.
I’m running LineageOS with Magisk and Play Integrity Fix. That works for my bank’s app, but I’m annoyed that they make me do it and gave their app a 1-star review on Google Play for it.
Usually not worth it, the website usually has everything.
I’ve been surprised by how many banking apps I’ve seen that don’t require safteynet or google services (I thought basically all of them would require it). Some banks websites don’t work very well on mobile, so that’s some peoples reasoning.
Things you can’t do with the website:
- Login with biometrics. Wants password and 2fa each time. As it should, but it gets tedious, especially when I want to confirm online payments (which need to be confirmed inside the interface after you login).
- No contactless payments. You can enroll a card into Google Pay but fuck Google, I don’t want them seeing what I buy.
- No notifications, hope the bank is willing to send SMS instead.
- Bit more tedious to send money to someone because the website can’t look up contacts by name, have to look them up separately and copy the phone number over.
