Banking apps seem to be a motif among things that donāt play well with privacy ROMs. My bankās 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.
Canāt 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, soā¦
Oh, of course they could do so, but they wonāt 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
Depends on the bank and what kind of notifications you want.
Some banks only allow certain types of notifications to occur through the app.
Itās 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 Iām not using graphene OS, because our government 2FA system doesnāt work in graphene OS (even with play services installed) so itās impossible to do anything. I canāt 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. Itās 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 donāt need the app if you still want 2FA for digital handling. But I donāt want to have to carry that with me it would be a significant inconvenience for me.
My bankās app has way less functionality than the web version, but itās used as a second factor to auth some operations, so I have to use both.
Depends on the country. Iām teaching in Thailand and here you canāt do any banking through a browser. You can only use the bankās official app and you donāt 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 bankās office. Itās really annoying and the reason I probably canāt 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 lifeā¦
Itās possible, just very inconvenient. You end up getting massive amounts of change that you have to lug around to spend.
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 peopleās money. Donāt use them if you have any other option.
Same here, mobile check deposit and Zelle are literally the only things Iāve 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 & thatās 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 youāre a business owner with clients/customers paying with checks.
