So is it now their official policy that to have a bank account with them you must own a phone that can run their app?
I really don't get how your excuse worked, but I am guessing this is a made up policy and the fact it's a charity made them think twice about being assholes about this.
Continuing to patronize a business that will not sell you a product you want is being a pushover. The flip side is if a business is in the custom of only providing certain services to those who threaten to leave, then they shouldn't be surprised when people threaten to leave in order to receive good service.
I suspect that you live in Canada, which has the banking oligopoly that leads to banks not giving a shit, and customers that are used to banks not trying. If more people were willing to take their money and walk, Canadian banking would probably suck less ass.
Just because there are juggernauts ("the big five/six") doesn't mean it's an oligopoly. This isn't like telecom where there are only 3 choices (4 in some provinces) and nobody else can enter the game because it costs too much.
The existence of Credit Unions and small banks that offer similar but limited service does not negate the pricing power of Canadian banks. E.g. in most other modern countries paying $17-$35/mo for a checking account is not normal. In Canada that is just what every major bank charges for a checking account.
its also worth highlighting that many of the "options" in Canada are just online only brands of the big 6.
But there should always be at least one bank which can give you what you want, whatever that is. There are dozens to choose between if you're banking in USD or EUR.
Americans in these threads recommending switching banks are often unaware of how the USA is a relative outlier when it comes to diversity of banking. A lot of that is due to the rather distinctly American concept of the credit union. But within corporate banking, even the USA has seen successive mergers and some decline in choices.
Nobody would move all their money out of the country they live in.
Just because you haven't considered it doesn't make it anything strange or "bad faith" or "out of spite". People ate sushi before you ever heard of it.
They take you to court for not paying tax. You provide the judge with evidence that you actually did pay tax, but the tax office refunded it back to your account. The tax office looks very silly and the judge orders them to either accept the payment or waive the tax.
"Oh no! My employer doesn't allow me!"
"Oh no! My tax collector doesn't allow me!"
"Oh no! My government doesn't allow me!"
If you're a free man you do what you want, and the rest is their problem. If you're a thrall, you aren't allowed to be on the internet unless you show me a permission paper from your lord.
I'm a bit mocking, because it is such a silly trait among many (mainly Northern) Europeans to have a total thrall mentality when it comes to their banks.
In the real world, there is no problem at all for you to open a EUR account in a number of foreign EUR banks. Your employer pays to an IBAN account just like if you had a national bank. Your income is declared just as normal, because it doesn't matter one bit in which country the bank account is and tax authorities don't ask. That's how it functions in reality, and people claiming anything else are either uninformed or just spreading their mommies old boogey man tales.
Moreover, you aren't considering that some countries have BankID systems for everything from tax matters to accessing healthcare, and that only works with a local bank account (so much so that people moving from other EU countries are commonly shut out of everything for weeks until their local bank ID comes through).
People may prefer a foreign bank for any and every good reason besides mobile OS nerding, and that's nobody's business. Certainly not your employers business.
As for BankID, I know of it and it might just as well be called ThrallID from how ridiculous and pathetic it is that people would let their IDs be controlled and owned by private banks. You must admit that it's nothing to be proud of.
You can also keep your national bank account for your salary and ThrallID if you want to, and just transfer all your money to a foreign account every time you get your paycheck. That way your money is also a whole lot safer, and you get some better peace of mind.
Also, theory and practice are very different. While I agree you can fight back for your rights, I remember having contacted different kind authorities for 7 months because a company was rejecting my SEPA IBAN. Unfortunately, that was the only company I could use for that mandatory service, and after they got fined, they happily continued accepting only national IBANs.
The result has been months of frustration, endless calls/appointments with authorities to gain nothing. If I could go back, I would give them a different IBAN, even if on a theory level they were wrong.