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:
- 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).
- 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.