Downloading South African banking apps - What you need to know

[Hanno Labuschagne]

Downloading South African banking apps - What you need to know

South Africans should ensure they only download banking apps from official app stores.

Mobile banking apps offer a convenient and safe way to transact and pay online and most of South Africa's major banks offer these apps on both the Google Play and Apple App stores.

However, with Huawei's latest devices no longer supporting the Play Store, these users have to make use of Huawei's AppGallery to download and use banking apps.

 

[Totempole]

If you obtain the APK yourself from the Play Store using a compatible device, I don't foresee an issue.

However if any unrelated fraudulent activity occurs on your account your bank can use that against you.

The same as using multi-bank payment services like Ozow, Payfast and PayU.

In short, banks are dicks, don't give them a reason to screw you.

 

[Napalm2880]

FNB app has been terrible recently. Lots of issues with navigation and login.

 

[Crumbl0x]

If you obtain the APK yourself from the Play Store using a compatible device, I don't foresee an issue.

However if any unrelated fraudulent activity occurs on your account your bank can use that against you.

The same as using multi-bank payment services like Ozow, Payfast and PayU.

In short, banks are dicks, don't give them a reason to screw you.

This is why I don't see a fathomable reason to run these banking and payment apps on the majority of Android devices, at least this is something Apple can definitely be commended for. For legitimate reasons, one's device can be sorely outdated and open to a plethora of other vulnerabilities, or one can acquire a Huawei device without GMS and an untrusted alternative store and be open to the same fate, or one can run a device with custom firmware, latest security patches and be resilient to vulnerabilities but would be promptly blocked due to anti tamper mitigations in the majority of apps, or one would wish to have a stable and secure device without GMS other than Huawei's but would have the issue you mentioned with banks using that reason against you, even though it's possible to obtain the apk's directly from the Play Store without third party websites. It's honestly laughable sometimes how broken the Android ecosystem is these days and everyone who supports these practises that drives it further down.