[drnick1]

You don't have to carry two phones. The idea is that the second phone stays home powered off and is used as an access token for the bank's website. There is no reason to carry it around. Pay cash in stores or use a credit card when cash is inconvenient.

[dns_snek]

I think this is a pretty outdated view of banking. I open a banking app at least a few times a day. In the EU just about every online transaction has to be approved in the app, we also use various payment apps for quick person to person transfers, use the app to generate disposable virtual cards for online purchases, etc.

I could cut myself off from the modern financial world and just use online banking like it's 2010 but that's a pretty big ask.

[structural]

Is this a EU-specific thing? In North America I've never installed a banking app, don't even know if my institution even has one.

[thisislife2]

The US is way, way behind in banking P2P technology / fintech adoption. In many parts of Asia, even uneducated street vendors now accept digital payments via mobile phones (that's how easy it is). See - https://www.forbes.com/sites/pennylee/2024/04/17/the-us-lags... and

[drnick1]

I would rather not have the kind of "financial innovation" that requires non-free apps running on non-free operating systems on locked down hardware. These apps, by design, track how people spend their money.

[XorNot]

I cannot stress how much I do not care. Nor does anyone else.

I want to be able to run software on my device, not fulfill some nuts low-rent fantasy that they're a rebel against the government.

[dns_snek]

Traditional banks have about as much data about how you spend your money as any modern fintech. The banking system is non-free, locked down and centralized to begin with. How you access it is just a matter of cosmetics and policies.

[thisislife2]

> These apps, by design, track how people spend their money.

That depends - In India, for example, I am free to use either (1) a private company's app (like PayTM, Google Pay, PaisePe etc.) (2) a Government app or (3) my Bank's app to make digital payment using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) (or all 3). And, if I don't want to use any mobile app, I can still make offline payment through my mobile phone over USSD - https://razorpay.com/blog/how-to-make-offline-upi-payments/ ...

(You are right though that it is prone to abuse in the absence of strong privacy and data protection laws - digital payment does allow new form of surveillance capitalism to the corporates and new avenues of authoritarian control to the government).