(Europe) Bank shut down its website and forced everyone to use its app
(Europe) Bank shut down its website and forced everyone to use its app
The closed-source app is exclusively available in these places:
- Google Playstore
- Apple store
- Huawei store
The app will only run on quite recent phones. So anyone who does not keep their OS up to date (which implies periodically buying new hardware for the shitshow platforms people much choose between) are locked out of their account. Also:
- No walk-in service
- Over the counter service requires appointment and a fee for many staff-assisted operations
- No paper statements. No phone → no statements.
The app requires SMS 2fa, so non-phone or landphone users: don’t even think about trying to use an android emulator.
If you want to close your account to escape this shitshow, you have 2 options:
- In the app use the account closure feature, OR
- Send a shit load of sensitive information (ID/passport, utility bill, bank account numbers to close, account numbers of your new external account to transfer the money to, etc) via Google (gmail) from an IP address that Google accepts.
(edit) Worth mentioning an aspect of these cashless banks that should be embarrassing for them: when you close an account, they have no cash so they cannot pay you your balance. You can pull money from an ATM but obviously only in denominations of paper banknotes. So how do you get the rest out? They expect you to open an account elsewhere and transfer it. How silly is that? Maybe you don’t want another account, or maybe you’re moving to a completely different part of the world and the transfer cost will exceed what remains.
You can hack around this various ways, like dining out and paying an exact amount by card and the rest by cash. But really, banks should be embarrassed they cannot give you cash. They shouldn’t need a vault just to secure €20 or so in change.
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The biggest concerns I have with this is there can't ever be more than iOS or Android for smartphones anymore.
If anyone tried to make a different OS, no one would buy it because you need these apps for so many things that just aren't accessible otherwise. And no company will make their app for another OS because they will point out the market share is too small.
And with the talks of breaking up Google, which could really hurt Android, there is a decent concern that it will become a government created, third-party enforced monopoly for Apple. And since Apple isn't causing it, taking them to court over their monopoly would be hard to almost impossible.
If that was a real issue, I imagine you'd start seeing a compatibility layer for Android apps offered on whatever other system. iOS might be harder because of deliberate cryptographic or hardware vendor lock-in.
As many of these apps (especially banking apps) won't work on a rooted phone, I don't think they'd work on a compatibility layer.
Think DRM like BattlEye not working on Proton on Linux, certain checks would fail unless they rewrite the app to address this, and still the Play Store would be required to stay up for this to work.
As many of these apps (especially banking apps) won’t work on a rooted phone, I don’t think they’d work on a compatibility layer.
TIL. That's depressing, somebody at the bank cared enough to deliberately ruin our fun.
I’ve not tested a banking app on a rooted phone but what I care about is escaping the ecocidal practice of designed obsolescence whereby people are needlessly forced to buy more new hardware to update their software. So I tried running a banking app on an Android emulator and it refused to run.
So there are 2 show-stoppers for banking apps for me:
- forced patronage of Google -- no escape from Playstore (not sure if I’m okay with the Huawei store as an alternative)
- ecocidal designed obsolescence -- emulators rejected
If a bank were competent enough to eliminate those two factors, I would also likely demand the app be open source.
Hmm. I wonder what the issue is, exactly. Just by the way Turing machines work you should be able to make it run in an emulator somehow.