Banking Apps

[HappyHacker]

I must admit that I find banking apps very useful especially in the absence of any bank branches. How ever, and sorry about the long post:
Last night I thought I would quickly pay my barclaycard bill in full to avoid interest, as I spent a lot last month. Log onto the app and go to Barclaycards, it says card no longer in use as I have not used it for a long time and stops there, no statement, no balance, no opportunity to pay. Same result when I try again. I realise the card it is referencing is the out of date card, the only alternative is to apply for a new card. I have a cunning idea, I'll do a transfer from my Lloyds bank as an alternative. Lloyds App say there is a problem try again later. I try three times with same result. I also realise the flaw with my cunning plan, I don't know the outstanding balance.

I try the web and the barclaycard site. I can't log on as I have no idea what my memorable information is, it is not required to log onto the app, and I am not going out to my office and starting up my steam driven computer to access my password app at close to midnight. After many dead ends, in desperation, I press the pay via the app button and this time the App displays my current card and allows me to make a payment via my Lloyds debit card. For authorisation it only gives the option of using the Lloyds banking App and low and behold the Lloyds app actually loads and having gone through all the scam awareness messages and saying I know the recipient it allows me to press the pay button. SUCCESS I think as everything exits and I go to bed.

In the middle of the night I wake up and think I have not received the normal message saying that payments will not appear on my credit card statement for up to 24 hours. Check today and it appears that no payment has been made. Phone Barclaycard and try to navigate their automated query(AI) routing process having to state what I want to talk about, none of my responses is satisfactory. Eventually I just say yes and I get a very helpfull person who tells me no payment has been made and takes my debit card number and takes the payment.

I accept that the apps are designed to help the banks profits rather than the customers and their mental health but what a waste of time.

 

[RogerS]

Welcome to Banking 2026. Once upon a time you could walk into a branch. Remember those ?

 

[Woodbloke]

Once upon a time you could walk into a branch. Remember those ?

When I was very small, my grandad was a bank messenger for the then Westminster Bank in Colchester and every morning he had to go down into the safe and bring up the ledgers for the clerks to use. I remember them as huge, leather bound books about 50mm or so thick and every clerk had one; all entries were by hand usually in Copperplate script, so it was my job to boy handle them off grandad's trolly and plonk them somehow onto the relevant counter.

Once done, it was back to the flat on the top story of the building for one of my nan's cooked breakfasts. Happy days! - Rob

 

[Lurker]

From what I’ve heard from people, we are lucky to have a fully functioning bank branch in town,
Also a significant portion of our savings are in the local building society, I like the idea of my money benefiting locals and their interest rate is quite good.
One thing I really like is our accounts there all have traditional books for payment and receipt.

 

[Mike G]

Welcome to Banking 2026. Once upon a time you could walk into a branch. Remember those ?

Nationwide are a mutual, and have vowed to keep their local branches open come what may. When our previous bank closed, moving to Nationwide was obvious. If we ever have a query or a problem, we pop into the branch, and find that a whole lot of people of our generation are like minded.

 

[Lons]

One of the issues is that banks and building societies often do maintenance in the wee hours and there can be abnormal consequences so I learned to do my transactions early evening.

It is very easy to get used to the face recognition access but when you need the passcodes it becomes an issue and of course writing them down rather compromises the reasons for extra security.

 

[wallace]

We had 6 banks but the last closed recently, guess what they used the building for. A banking hub

 

[Gill]

Nationwide are a mutual, and have vowed to keep their local branches open come what may. When our previous bank closed, moving to Nationwide was obvious. If we ever have a query or a problem, we pop into the branch, and find that a whole lot of people of our generation are like minded.

Our Nationwide branch is quite local, being only 15 miles away in Skegness. The staff are incredibly helpful and all branches have staff available who are specially trained to deal with customers who have dementia. I have an LPA for hubby’s finances but it’s comforting to know the Nationwide will be there when the time comes.

 

[Blackswanwood]

Nationwide have only given a commitment to maintain their branch network for the next three and a half years. It’s a great bit of marketing on their part.

 

[Spectric]

Once upon a time you could walk into a branch. Remember those ?

And they had people behind the counter who were mostly willing to help, now in the few that are left some kid shows you to a fancy ATM that he tells you can do anything you need to, if only.

 

[Steve Maskery]

When we moved to France, we opened an account with Britline, a Credit Agricole bank in Normandy staffed by native English speakers. Good service, acceptable waiting times, but all phone-based.

As there was a Credit Agricole bank in our local town, we transferred our account. Credit Agricole Centre Ouest is not the same bank as Credit Agricole Normandie. Credit Agricole is an Association of banks. But now we could walk in and speak to someone tete-a-tete, and at least two of the staff had very good English (one a BA in English) so when we ran out of French words, they were happy to talk in English. We like to speak French when we can, but technical stuff is hard, so there was a lot of Franglais and it worked well.

In January this year they closed the bank. They have kept the ATM (in a slightly better position, TBH), but now everything is by email or I have to drive a good half-hour rather than 10 mins. I recently wanted to download all my transactions for last year in CSV format, and the reply to my email was "You can do that in the App". No I couldn't.

It is a great shame, especially as there is no such thing as free banking in France, we pay a significant fee every month.

It's the way of the world.

S