<\/div>\n
Another all native app! You really appreciate how good a native app is after using a horrible web view app. ANZ’s goMoney has all the features you expect, like transferring money to any account (not just bookmarked accounts)<\/em>, BPay, viewing all account balances and even a “quick payment” thing where you can email or SMS someone a request to send or receive money. The account detail is clear and searchable, transferring between accounts and to other accounts is obvious and again, because it’s all native, it’s fast.<\/p>\nUnlike the other banks, ANZ doesn’t give you an option to log in directly with your Internet banking username and password – it’s PIN or bust with GoMoney. Personally I don’t think it’s a downside, but maybe the more security paranoid won’t like it.<\/p>\n
Another thing that’s a bit different than the other bank apps is what happens when you switch between apps. Let’s imagine you are copy & pasting details from an email into the app in order to transfer money – in all the other apps, there’s usually a minute or two before the app logs you out, so you can return immediately and continue where you left off. In the ANZ app, if you switch away and return instantly, you need to re-enter your PIN and you’re returned to home screen, cancelling whatever you were doing. This is annoying.<\/p>\n
Also annoying is the fact there’s no iPad app. Boo. I like using my iPad. If you’re someone who only<\/em> has an iPad (like my entire family, who have moved on from desktop machines)<\/em>, this really sucks.<\/p>\nOther than that though, it’s certainly one of the best mobile banking apps in Australia.<\/p>\n
Citibank<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
I think this is one of the worst iPhone banking apps available. For starters, it took them almost two months to get an iOS 7 compatible version out. The current version does work on iOS 7 but it’s still hideous, slow and convoluted. Look at the screenshots – the aspect ratio of the icons are wrong! What sort of rookie mistake is that? Did nobody from Citibank use the app and ask whoever made it, “umm, can we fix that before we release it? It looks unprofessional”<\/em>. There’s no way the marketing department would release a brochure or an ad like that, why let it slide here?<\/p>\nThe glitches don’t stop there – look at the first screen shot. I asked the app not<\/em> to remember me. But no, it keeps my username in the field there, regardless of whether it’s toggled on or not, I have to manually clear it. Brilliant. Look at the third screenshot. Citibank®l<\/strong> Visa Gold\/Platinum?! What sort of amateurs made this app?<\/p>\nThe entire app is slow too and includes all my pet peeves – no PIN login, can only transfer to previously bookmarked accounts and doesn’t have a “locate us”<\/em> feature to find the nearest Citibank ATM either.<\/p>\nI’m struggling to find any positives about the Citibank app. It lets you view your balance and transactions. It probably hasn’t killed anyone, so that’s a win.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
The iPad app is much more modern and is better in every way than the iPhone app, but it’s still not very good. It’s slow. It’s still ugly. And worst of all, it requires you enter secondary authentication to view your transactions or make a transfer (of course, only to bookmarked accounts). You need to log in to the iPhone app<\/em> in order to get a PIN from it, so you can view the transactions on your iPad! You may as well just log in on the iPhone and view them there.<\/p>\nAt least on the iPad you can see where the nearest ATMs are. That’s something positive.<\/p>\n
Bankwest (Business)<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
Revision: I’ve been informed that Bankwest’s app actually is native and totally different if you have a consumer account. I only have a business account with Bankwest, so didn’t know there was a whole other persona to this app. This review focusses on the user experience for a business customer, running v2.2.0 of the Bankwest app.<\/em><\/p>\nBankwest’s attempts at mobile banking are basic. Send money, view your accounts, done. It’s a web view, with small tap targets and fuzzy graphics. There’s no limits on transfers, but there’s also no PIN login. It’s got a nice map of the nearest ATMs, but no branches, which is quite odd. Because it isn’t native, it’s a slow too. It’s an app to say “hey, we have an app”<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Bankwest iPad app is exactly the same as logging in to the website in Safari. The exact same.\u00a0For the sake of noticing something relatively interesting about the app, Bankwest has made the app blur when you switch between it. I guess it’s for privacy. I’ve never seen that before.<\/p>\n
ING Direct<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
This one took me by surprise. It’s the most modern looking and overall most pleasant to use banking app available. It’s also the only one designed with iOS 7 in mind.<\/p>\n
ING keeps things basic, which isn’t a bad thing, unlike Bankwest’s version of basic. You can log in with a PIN and if you enable the option, you can get a balance overview on the app home screen before entering the PIN. Once you’ve logged in, there’s a balance, transactions and the options to send money to another account. Unfortunately I don’t have any money in my ING account, so I can’t test it accurately, but I’ve been told there’s no restrictions on who you can send money to, unlike other apps.<\/p>\n
Tap the lion (or swipe left)<\/em> and there’s a sub menu with stuff like how to contact the bank, their current interest rates and so on, but also the inclusion of Bank@Post outlets (aka, post offices)<\/em>, which is how you can deposit cheques and cash, as ING have no physical branches. Tap the hamburger icon\u00a0(or swipe right)<\/em> and you can view your other accounts and messages from ING.<\/p>\nING have developed a native app, that looks good, does what you need it to and is fast. One of the best available I reckon.<\/p>\n[optin-cat id=5772]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this article, I’ll look at apps from NAB, Westpac, ANZ, Commonwealth, ING Direct, Bankwest and Citibank, gauging their overall usability and usefulness.\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11],"tags":[152,450,447,448,15,449],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"reckoner_social_message":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7609,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions\/7609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}