• General

  • NationWide (UK Banking App) recognises GrapheneOS :)

I have been asking various banks to support their apps on GOS officially and happy to share that Nationwide UK now plans to support it :) Or at-least that's what I got from their customer care. When banks don't support or care about it, I'm usually met with "what the hell you talking about" kinda response, so this was a welcome change.

Right now I know at-least 2 banks who officially support GrapheneOS in the sense that they are ready to work on their apps if it's broken on GrapheneOS: Starling (my favourite) and NationWide. Seems like a triumph each time I hear a response other than "what the hell ... " stuff lol.

I've put the relevant screenshots (and apologies for writing hastily and not properly/accurately explaining what GOS is etc there) in the GitHub thread about banking apps on GOS for NationWide UK: https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/issues/332#issuecomment-2718750842

Next on my radar is Bank Of Scotland whose app says it's a rooted or a jailbroken device (ie. doesn't support GrapheneOS at all). Getting there slowwwwwly lol.

Ah i think GHub has shadow banned me or whatever (just created a throwaway account to upload the screenshot in the comment but can't see the comment once logged out). Anyway, I'll come back later and try upload image here directly if that's possible or check out imgur or something.

    That's good news, thanks for the update.

    Did you also go into details like Play Integrity? If you like, you could share your (anonymized) letter here - then other users can use it as a template and also contact their bank.

    Right so GHub considers accounts made via one of the burner email providers as suspicious and doesn't let you do much for the first few day.

    Anyway, I uploaded the screenshots to another image hosting site and it's showing up in browser/tabs without cookies so hopefully shows up here too (and if it does feel free to add it to the GH thread or else I'll try doing it after a few days if GH lift their shadowban):

    pic-0 : https://ibb.co/Tq0W7YMX

    pic-1 : https://ibb.co/jkcrPYL3

    One of the comments on the privsec page reports that the app works fine without play services installed. Is there anywhere that I can get the app other than google play store?

      MotherShipton One of the comments on the privsec page reports that the app works fine without play services installed. Is there anywhere that I can get the app other than google play store?

      If the developers of the app publish it in other app stores, or provide an APK download, yes. If not, it's possible to use other apps or websites that attempt to fetch the APKs from Play Store, but using the Play Store is the official recommendation by the GrapheneOS project. I attempted to summarise that here: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/20760-im-confused-about-google-accounts/30

        MotherShipton I got it from Aurora Store - that doesn't require play services etc (in-fact that profile of mine is pretty de-googled - no play, no compatibility layer and so on). My usual pref is Obtanium > Aurora Store > Play store. Anything via Play store is in its own separate profile where play and compatibility etc are installed/activated.

        I don't know how recommended this approach is though.

          Thanks. Actually I de-Aurora'd my devices a couple of weeks back with a factory reset and reinstallation of my (relatively) few apps using only Accrescent and Github/Obtanium. This was after reading advice such as that linked above.

          For now, I will stick to banking using my Vanadium browser. It's not the worst hassle to have to sign in each time and I'm confident it is safe and secure.

            MotherShipton Yes ofc, browser banking will totally work and is more private (for instance Nationwide app upon first install clearly says it's going to send home the details about all the installed apps on the system for "security" reasons).

            However, my effort in petitioning the banks is because of the following reasons:

            1. With some banks it's almost impossible to do banking without their apps. Eg. app-only banks like Starling. Their features are too modern for many of us to overlook (spaces, virtual cards, limits per card etc).
            2. Logging in via browser is a PITA. Most banks that I've used don't just use username + password which would be easy to fill via password managers - hardly takes time. They will have nonsense like key in xth, yth and zth characters of memorable word, followed by a pin which they'll send you via an SMS (instead of using things like TOTP) and what not. This makes frequent logging in very painful (esp if your memorable word is also actually randomly generated), specially if you give out different cards to different services and want to freeze/unfreeze them regularly etc.

            The 1st question that folks have asked me when I told them to install GOS is "do the banking apps work" and "does google pay/nfc pay work" etc. So that is obviously a very high priority for many, even if they are willing to sacrifice other bits (like fancy AI integrated camera etc).

            I think if we have Banks recognise GOS as a platform they support, that by itself will lead to a more accelerated adoption (for eg. in my own family). Maybe it'll one day lead to most/all banking apps also support NFC payment in addition to googe/apple pay. Maybe more crowdfunding for GOS too. That's how i see it.

                anon67234

                To add to that, without an app you usually won't be able to get notifications for transactions.