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?
They are important.
I need to use them on the go so itās a must have.
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.
Depends on the bank and what kind of notifications you want.
Some banks only allow certain types of notifications to occur through the app.
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
I think your largest banks like your Wells Fargoās 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.
Iāve never used a banking app and I do quite a bit of business with multiple banks.
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.
