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?
Do you not run apps at all?
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?)
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 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).
Was it not when interest rates were low, like when LIBOR was near zero? My understanding of that era was that many retail banks were working to shed retail deposits. Holding money was not profitable in that era, especially retail. And today I would still suspect it's not what banks are going for big picture.
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.
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.
It's RFID communication with a smart card. The bank would have to transmit keys to your computer to be able to interface with it, which they probably won't want to do for security reasons.
Your computer doesn't need to have any keys to do this. The card has a secret key, but it doesn't give it to the reader, it just responds to the challenge. The challenge often comes from a point of sale terminal, but it could just as easily come from the bank's web servers, and it isn't really a secret.
The only thing which resembles a secret here is the response from the card, which is the thing anyone can get regardless when have the card. Also, the entire premise of the card is that the attacker doesn't have it, so if they do then you've already lost that part of the game.
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.
The same is true for PCs. They've supported that sort of thing for decades, and it's optional for both the phone and the PC.
On top of that, a phone that people carry around everywhere is dramatically more likely to be lost or stolen than a desktop PC that never leaves their house.
> With the web app, people will often save their bank website login credentials in the browser.
If the bank actually cares about this then there are various ways to disable or impede it.
> However, when you look at the demographics of banking app vs website use
This is just the thing where you make something worse so fewer people use it and then use that as an excuse to keep making it worse. Nobody needs an app that could have been a web page, people use them because it's what get shoved down their throat if they don't go out of their way to do something else.
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.
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.
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.
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.