There are many drawbacks to banking applications, but what are the alternatives?

We are more dependent on banking applications, but there are also more and more malfunctions. Sometimes you can not do anything.

Banking processor failures are frustrating but inevitable

Maybe as you get older, you will mainly have to pay taxes, increasingly high energy bill and mortgage, but I have a feeling that in the past banking was a lot of fun. Or at least more love.

When you were young, the bank was still a magical building. That’s where the money came from, and you got the prizes. Once the coins are neatly sorted, it is like a unit where you can throw your money into it. Things are still arranged by mail or you have to come physically. You receive a piece of paper from your bank account and place it neatly in a folder.

It has now become a soulless thing. We all have a banking app on our smartphones, but a lot of the fun is gone. Gifts for kids are less special because they no longer have coins. The interest has evaporated and it is almost logical to keep your money in old socks under the mattress. And the branches are heavily pruned. We depend on the applications, but you have to trust that they will work.

Many malfunctions

As a typical tech news writer these days, you have the job of typing news about bank failures. Not every crash is written, of course, but if it takes a long time, it is necessary to inform users. The involvement of banks in this area is even more desirable.

Last week there was a breakdown in SNS Bank, ASN Bank and RegioBank. There was a crash in ING and ABN Amro in May, a crash in ING in April, and several crashes in ING and Rabobank SNS, ASN and Regiobank in February. And only those disturbances are really news.

This can be very frustrating because you can do nothing anymore. In case of emergency, you may no longer be able to go to one branch, or to some villages where another branch is open. You can expect it to work, right? That’s what we pay for, right?

In one line

The problem is, we will never be one hundred percent without interruption. Banks are more prone to external attacks. If you want to achieve zero hurdles, an unprecedented amount of money will be invested, which will immediately reflect on the cost to the user.

You do not want to go back to the last paper. Did you know that you can not transfer money from your bank account to another bank account in the United States? There, people often pay by check and you have to change the rent by mail – hopefully it will come later. I’m excited to enter the payment note correctly when I change something, let alone that.

Unfortunately, malfunctions of banking applications are only part of it. In an emergency, it’s absolutely frustrating, but in about 99 percent of cases you may have to wait an hour to re-access your account. It will always be much faster than standing in line at the bank or putting paper in the letterbox.

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