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?
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
It’s a must for me. My phone is my primary day-to-day computer, so I need to be able to so everything from that. Unfortunately that is also why I’m not using graphene OS, because our government 2FA system doesn’t work in graphene OS (even with play services installed) so it’s impossible to do anything. I can’t check anything WRT banking, schools, taxes, daycare, doctors appointments, hospital record or change anything that requires the involvement of city hall, including checking digital mail from the municipality or government. It’s basically not possible to function in our society without it.
Out of curiosity, what do older citizens do? Like those in their 80s? Many here do not have a smart phone or mobile.
For banking and other official business, they have to go physically. If their bank has no physical department near them well then it sucks to be them. For digital mail you can apply for exemption and you will get physical letters.
You can order a digital code generator so you don’t need the app if you still want 2FA for digital handling. But I don’t want to have to carry that with me it would be a significant inconvenience for me.
Wow, that is pretty hostile to the elderly.
Go to the bank in person
Wow, that is pretty hostile to the elderly. Imagine those who struggle to get about? Excluding them from society.
Website here is awful. Paste is disabled, it’s not optimized for mobile, it’s a PitA to use, & there is literally code to check if the user is running Netscape Navigator 4. The site has a weird encoding that doesn’t allow English punctuation, & to change your email or phone number requires physical documents, ID, & a wait period. The app is poorly coded & doesn’t work if you have root, are running a custom ROM, (& likely if you don’t have Google services)—so I do just use the site. …But if we are being real, I actually always keep cash on me & cash is preferred so while the problem is still relevant, needing the app/site isn’t dire.
What is really missing for my country on the site is QR code scanning for bank-to-bank transfers that a lot of vendors use & to do some bill payment. For instance, while I could set up the electric bill to auto-debit, my internet bill only has QR scan without a physical bank number I could transfer to (& the short list of utilities doesn’t include my net)—so I take a 25-minute bike ride in the heat once a month to pay that bill but I reward myself by getting to swing by the nearby-ish Hong Kong pie bakery to get a treat & a latte to make out-of-the-way trip feel worth it.
When I do have to use the site & since there is no QR code scanning, the workflow is:
- Login (I have a script to block their paste-blocker to use my password manager)
- Create a new recipient which requires a unique name, the account number + their banking service provider, phone or email, and 12-digit SMS 2FA code (no TOTP or FIDO2 option); this process is done on a desktop-only site which is hard to work with
- Confirm that with email
- Go to transfers, select my from account (despite me only having one account & no default preference option), find that user I created, fill in an amount, do another 12-digit 2FA
- Then they want to take a picture of my phone after the transfer for whatever reason reason
This process due to bad UX can take up to 10 minutes if they are not ready. So the tl;dr is to carry cash or hope an ATM is nearby.
I had discussed it with a local & he said there has been more push towards cashless brought on by businesses/government wanting to track everything & tourists demanding their privacy-invasive ‘comforts’ like $BIG_TECH_PAY & $CREDIT_CARD options despite most folks being fine with cash. Cryptocurrency is basically never accepted either.
If the day comes where I don’t have a choice, I will start carrying a second device with nothing but banking & similar nonsense that prevents my freedom to do what I want with the device I own. OP knows the website experience matter since it not only gets ported to platforms outside the mobile monopoly but sandboxes the banks for spying on your device & asking questions that aren’t their business like if I run an unGoogled ROM. Good thing there was a mass of pushback against Google trying to add attestestion to Chromium ore we’d enjoy the same nonsense on the web too where I’m sure Linux would be block by these goobers.
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.
Ah, nice to know. I personally consider this a fair tradeoff for freedom and lack of financial surveillance.
