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?
Cashing checks and zelle are the big ones
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.
I use Zelle almost exclusively for my business and I have never had an issue with it.
Do you have some examples?
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.
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).
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.
That would tempt me to dump a backup with adb and rifle through the app data to find the seed
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t use them. Web banking works completely fine for me. Back when I did use them, though, I always used them on privacy ROMs/GOS specifically. Went through 4 different banks and all their apps worked fine for me on GrapheneOS. No Google Play services either.
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.
I haven’t had any issues with banking apps on GrapheneOS with play services installed
Depends on the country. I’m teaching in Thailand and here you can’t do any banking through a browser. You can only use the bank’s official app and you don’t even have a login/password for it, you have to go to the bank and activate the app in person as a foreigner (I think Thai citizens can do it online but foreigners have to do it in person). Nobody takes actual cards for the payment and you pay everywhere by scanning QR codes which has to be done through the app. If you buy a new phone you have to activate the app again at the bank’s office. It’s really annoying and the reason I probably can’t go with GrapheneOS or any other custom roms because the bank app is absolutely essential.
Is using cash impossible in daily life instead? It is hard to imagine for me that a smartphone may be outright required for daily life…
It’s possible, just very inconvenient. You end up getting massive amounts of change that you have to lug around to spend.
Oh yes this QR code bullshit drives me nuts back home too
• Convenience, no need to waste time and car fuel going back and forth to the bank all week as i get a lot of cheques and i can just deposit straight after reception from my phone itself
• Mine put new ones in all year round as its not really a bank, kind of the same but it’s a “caisse populaire” in my language.
• Not really. If they offer it to mobile, they’ll offer it to computers always.
I don’t like smartphone and won’t use apps for anything important.
