Getting finance apps to work on GrapheneOS

Xplet1veDeleted

Hey ya'll
Pardon the long post, I got a lot of variables I'm working with...here's my conundrum: I built a finance sandbox and I'm trying to populate it with banking, credit card, and payment apps - I need this, I'm on the go a lot and have to have access to this stuff sometimes. I've been working on it all day and just can't make any headway and desperately need some other options if anybody has any.

So I want to of course not sign into google at all on this phone, but as I understand it none of these apps will work without google's FCM services and what not. I've been told theoretically I can use what i need to from google anonymously so that's what I've been trying but it's not working. Apparently I need google framework services but I can't find it any apps stores to install. I was hoping it might be attached to either google play store or google play services which I DO have installed, but it doesn't seem to be the case, the finance apps I got from aurora store won't open; they try to load and then just crash immediately so I'm guessing it I don't have google framework installed, OR there's some other component that I'm missing and am completely unaware of.

As I understand it the best option is actually just to not use apps, to just access those finance services from the browser...which sounds great, but doesn't work in my case as I live abroad for part of the year and many finance websites don't work at all with foreign IPs, you HAVE to use an app or you can't get access. And you can't use a VPN either, banks will detect it and throw up guardrails.

Any ideas? I'm open to any solution that gets me access to my finances and keeps me anonymous with google...is there a way to get these apps and google and graphene to play nice together? OR a VPN so slick and sophisticated it can fool the banks when I'm outside the US, so I can just use the browser and skip apps entirely?
I also thought about trying to set up a dummy google account and signing in just on my finance profile and running google play store properly, but I don't love that one, I feel google would still probably find a way to tie me to that device somehow.
Thanks in advance to anyone who responds

Foggy

Xplet1veDeleted GSF is part of Google Play Services which can be installed via the GOS app store.

One workaround for the VPN problem is to rent your own virtual private server (VPS) in the right country and install VPN server software on it (requires some Linux experience although there are plenty of guides out there). Then you set up your phone to connect to that server, and your phone's connections all appear from its IP. VPSes can be rented for a few dollars a month, look at websites like lowendbox.com for current deals.

Such a VPN server doesn't have the benefit of mixing up your traffic with other users, and outbound connections always come from its fixed IP. So it's not very anonymous, but then you're logging into the bank anyway so that isn't relevant here. However it does give you an IP that isn't on lists of VPN endpoints, so should hopefully bypass those blocks. (It's possible it could be blocked for being a datacentre IP, but less likely especially with smaller VPS providers)

userofgos

Foggy GSF is part of Google Play Services which can be installed via the GOS app store.

GSF was removed as of this update: 2024101600

Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer: add stubs to fully remove the need for the Google Services Framework (GSF) app for fresh installs of sandboxed Google Play, which has been removed as a dependency in our app repository for Android 15+, but it should still be kept for existing installs to avoid potential issues

Xplet1veDeleted

Foggy I am attempting this workaround, but I don't know if it's going to work, every single element of this set up seems to be fighting me the entire way. I think I'm probably going to wind up having to suck it up and just sign into google properly in the end, nothing else seems to really be working that well.
That being said, have you done this? The vps set up? If so can you tell me anything about your configuration? I signed up for one and have been using Putty to interact with it, but I'm now getting hung up on installing a vnc so I can access and use it, nothing seems to be compatible with it. It's been incredibly frustrating nad I've already wasted many hours over several days on it, and I'm wondering if it's even worth my time as so many projects I attempt to workaround google just keep failing.

Byku

A non-anonymous account should be enough as all those apps are non-anonymous anyway so at best Google will know what financial apps you're using. However, if you want to go an extra mile, you could create private space with an anonymous Google account and push these apps into private space just for updating them. You can keep them all disabled in private space. This is so those banking apps won't bitch about not being installed via Google Play. In your financial profile you would have Google Play services without any permissions given to them. This should be enough for banking apps not to complain. Certain banking apps have their own stupid quirks. My bank for example wants Google Play to have access to the phone permission for some stupid reason, but that prompt can be ignored and it still works luckily.