Comment by louthy
5 days ago
This is pretty extreme, it’s just an app for your convenience. I agree that web access should be provided too, but most people find apps more useful.
Do you not run apps at all?
5 days ago
This is pretty extreme, it’s just an app for your convenience. I agree that web access should be provided too, but most people find apps more useful.
Do you not run apps at all?
I empathise with GP’s anger. “You hold my money” should be enough of a reason to do all in their power to build great web apps and support alternative OS’es.
I find that banking apps deserve that extra bit of anger pointed towards them. (It’s also increasingly hard to find an ATM in many countries. What are banks up to?)
> “You hold my money” should be enough
The thing is, people like GP don't seem to realize that holding their money is not much of an asset to these banks. Like, at all. Maybe no that interest rates are higher. But in general, you're not doing them any favor. My understanding is that holding retail money is a loss leader for most banks. Unless GP is ultra wealthy, they're not doing the bank any favors by giving them their savings or whatever.
Banks absolutely make money on retail deposits, and you definitely are doing them a favor by putting your money in.
Banks do spend a lot on marketing to acquire a given customer, and will then upsell that customer on more profitable products like loans and credit cards. But having a high customer acquisition cost and then upselling is not quite the same as being a "loss leader" (which sort of implies that marginal profit is negative, which is definitely not true).
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Okay, but here: I pay my main bank 2€/month to have my account. Am I not a customer? I didn’t ask them for favours. I pay for my account, my partner has insurance with them, we buy bonds and their insurance products, etc. But since their app is so immensely bad, we’re slowly moving to a different bank.
> You hold my money” should be enough of a reason to do all in their power to build great web apps
Tell that to Vanguard or Fidelity. Two of the largest 'money holders' in existence, and probably the two worst financial apps I can think of.
In my case, the app offers functionality that isn't available on the web version. So I resentfully use the app, but I'd prefer all features were available via the web instead.
I’m with you, except that in this situation I resentfully forego the feature because I refuse to install apps.
Web banking means you need the card reader gadget as well for the authentication. The app uses secure features of the OS to aid authentication so you don't need to read the card. Web access on your phone still needs the card reader gadget.
Depends on where in the world you are, Norway for instance has not been using card chips for 2fa consumer auth for banking. Instead the 2fa has been a separate code generating gadget, and now also alternatively an app (which I do get the feeling the company that the banks set up handle auth for all of them are kinda pushing everyone into, but for now there thankfully is an option where you only need 1 online device with nothing more than a functioning browser).
Modern cards and phones support NFC, so you would only need a "gadget" (NFC reader) when using a PC that doesn't already have one, and a USB one is ~$20.
What this really needs is better browser support for NFC:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_NFC_API
But so let's do that then.
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It's not the NFC the bank is interested it, it the MFA provided by your phone PIN, fingerprint or face unlock.
When you open the app on your phone, the phone probably needed to be unlocked first, though not everyone sets a PIN or biometric lock on their phone.
Then you will be prompted for a separate PIN or your fingerprint within the banking app. This provides a stronger signal to the bank that you are the legitimate account holder. If your phone is lost or stolen, the chances of someone else being able to authenticate to your banking app are considerably reduced.
With the web app, people will often save their bank website login credentials in the browser. So now someone nefarious only needs to access the unlocked computer or phone the go to the bank's website to gain unauthorised by still authenticated access to the customer's accounts.
Yes, there are now laptops and tablets with biometric authentication, so the potential is there for adding biometric authentication for banking website. However, when you look at the demographics of banking app vs website use, a strong majority of Millennials and Gen-Z do all their banking via the phone app. Gen-X also slightly favour the phone app whereas Boomers strongly prefer the website. So banks focus their development efforts where the majority of users are.
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meanwhile in my case the app offers functionality that isn't available on the web version while simultaneously requiring the web version for some of the things
What's more convenient than a permanent irreversible requirement that if I ever want to do any banking, I must use my phone or go to a physical branch (which are slowly all disappearing) to recover access. I can never just go back to _not_ using the app, I can only move the app to another phone. And the app restricts which apps I can have installed and even which developer settings I can enable.
The average banking app is not about convenience, it is about restricting how a user can access their account, compliance box ticking and an endless march towards minimising liability at all cost. Meanwhile people are getting mugged and moving money at knifepoint because the device they normally carry around everywhere with them is now a gateway to their bank account.
I only run apps that are open source, or that I can audit and that don't abuse Android's silly features to restrict me, and only when the app isn't a requirement to access or interact with something. For example I refuse to buy any hardware which requires a proprietary app to use a feature.
Move to the UK, none of your listed issues exist due to open-banking [1] (or, at least I’ve never personally encountered any of those issues with any of the four bank accounts I have).
[1] https://www.openbanking.org.uk/
> Do you not run apps at all?
No, I don't want to run any apps, particularly commercial ones. I only run a few FOSS apps like K9, IronFox, Signal, Home Assistant.
I have, on occasion, downloaded and tested apps from the Play Store in a separate profile, and my experience of such apps has been extremely negative. Clearly, these apps don't exist for the user's benefit, and their purpose is to extract information about the user, including phone number, location, other apps used, contacts, etc.
I get that you'd want to protect you data, but that list is a bit weird. The phone number is rarely available to the apps today - you need to provide it yourself typically (SIM feature rather than Android thing), location can be denied, contacts can be denied, listing other apps requires a permission that very few apps are allowed to carry. Typically apps cannot do any of what you listed without explicit approval and it's definitely true for the legit ones.
> it’s just an app for your convenience
How often do you think companies are in the habit of doing things for your convenience?
Not who you replied to, but requiring me to install your app or create an account is usually going to mean I skip your thing unless I'm really motivated (or forced basically) to use it.
Well, their competitive advantage too, but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive
I will do what I can to avoid using apps.
I daily drive an app inside of an advertisement inside of a mini app inside of an everything app. Its terrible but there is no escape… unless you quit ordering coffee (which I just did)
I Have No Audio Permissions, But I Must Scream.
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I walk up to the counter.
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I use a terrible investment platform that purposefully nerfs the web app so you are forced to use the mobile app.
For something like a bank, I think they ought to be mandated to offer a functional website, yes. A slick app is nice too, but not if it’s the only option, specifically designed to steal my data and spy on me.