The problem is, this article assumes that you have an option to choose between the app and web page. This is not true in most important cases. The web site is gone or made a useless page which only tells you to download the app. Banks won't allow you to do much on their website. Infact, you can't login to their website if you don't have the app. I can't login into my work PC or laptop, if I don't use my company apps.
Same goes for every serious app which need to ID you. The app-based 2FA/MFA is becoming the standard for the web access. This is a need or pattern created by availability of a bad solution. Similar to how the cars created sprawling cities in the USA which prohibits you using your legs.
So, telling people to use website instead of app, is the same as telling them to walk to the corner shop instead of using a car. You can't walk to the many other essential places anymore, though.
You can escape from the car if you live a small village that has everything you need. But you can't escape from apps and internet if you need to feel that you exist in this world.
All European banks require you have the app to be able to do anything with your account. The is more of compliance/regulatory thing.
And to login into my work, I need to first login into my laptop and then enter into a very elaborate way of login into VPN or company WiFi. VPN/WiFi login requires you to first login into company app on your mobile to get a temp password. The company app need to work with other auth apps in a very complex way, making you hop through multiple ID checks. It is very likely that one of these apps might not like your speed of response and block you, requiring you create an incident ticket which itself requires logging into your account first. Since you can't create the ticket, you will call help desk and wait for half-day as they keep shifting your ticket across support queues.
Not true in all of Europe. Here in Denmark you need to have the state-issued identification app MitId ("My Id"), and most (all?) banks use it for authentication. Both for websites, and even when making a (larger?) transfer in their own app. You practically need that MitId app anyway, it is used for so many things, from the tax office to online payments to library cards.
Things are the other way in Finland, where each bank has its own identification app, and many official sites require you to use one for identifying yourself.
> All European banks require you have the app to be able to do anything with your account. The is more of compliance/regulatory thing.
This is not true in Sweden. I use three different banks in Sweden, and they all offer equal or more functionality on their mobile version websites.
This wasn’t always the case, though. In the early 2010s, I remember a bank blocking mobile user agents and referring to their app instead, due to “security”. I’m glad there has been some progress in the right direction since then.
One of the two medical networks in my area just locked their EHR portal down and require the mobile app, there is no way to access it from their website on mobile or desktop.
I wouldn’t care, except they require it for payments and in 2024 they auto-enrolled us in “paperless”. Fixable - by using the EHR systems configuration (needs a mobile app to access) back to mailed bills.
Major issue is though, I was sending their voluminous useless survey emails to spam, as they do not allow patients to unenroll their email address (it’s the primary key essentially), and their unsubscribe is essentially useless, and so I did not see repeated requests for payment.
This resulted in a $90 copay *going to collections*. Which of course sent me a paper bill, thankfully, and I got to it before it impacted our ability to access credit.
This must be a thing outside the US as far as not being able to do everything on the banking website even on mobile. The exception is depositing a check.
Monzo et al. aren’t “real” (i.e. traditional banks) they are purely online and entirely built around mobile apps. So there was probably no real demand for actual websites since all the banks clients signed up through the app to begin with.
OTP in Hungary is sunsetting their mobile web site in favor of the app. Website still accessible from PC. App seems to be a webview of the actual website.
Same goes for every serious app which need to ID you. The app-based 2FA/MFA is becoming the standard for the web access. This is a need or pattern created by availability of a bad solution. Similar to how the cars created sprawling cities in the USA which prohibits you using your legs.
So, telling people to use website instead of app, is the same as telling them to walk to the corner shop instead of using a car. You can't walk to the many other essential places anymore, though.
You can escape from the car if you live a small village that has everything you need. But you can't escape from apps and internet if you need to feel that you exist in this world.