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Comment by rwl | Hacker News Reader

I love the idea and wish I could get something like this in Europe. The main reason I "need" a smartphone over here is that EU banking regulations make it nearly impossible to do online banking without one. Anyone know of similar projects over here that would satisfy that need?

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"Europe" may be a bit broad there. In Denmark, I can get by without a smartphone; I have to carry what they call a "MitID code display" to gain access to online public services (though the device is entirely free of charge), but I also carry keys, so it's not a big hassle.

Depends on your bank.

A lot of banks in Germany still offer photoTAN generators. Effectively, a physical device that generates 2FA codes for your login. You can then use the website as usual and use the codes from this instead of phone confirmation. This is one example from ING.[0]

That way you can effectively use most feature phones as your daily drivers. HMD (Nokia) still manufacturers some of them that even come with GPS, etc. There are some feature phones that even run Android but I don't know what app support for things like Spotify is like.

[0]https://genostore.de/ING

There was a comment a couple of days ago that mentioned using MDM to lock down their iPhone. So essentially, dumbing down a normal smartphone to whatever your essentials are and removing the web browser. That may be an expensive way of going about this, but I find it an interesting approach. Android probably has similar solutions, anything outside that duopoly will get tricky again w.r.t. banking.

I gotta ask. What does everybody do with their banking app, that they need it with them all the time? It's always the excuse why people can't switch to some other phone.

I don’t need it with me all the time; I‘d prefer to just log in to a website on a real computer! But you can’t do this in the EU in practice without a banking app on a phone, or some other piece of hardware that you have to pay extra for and is certainly not more convenient.

At least in Germany, many banks still offer alternatives. You’ll need to buy dedicated hardware like a chipcard reader.

Alternatively, keep a cheap smartphone around with nothing but the banking app on it.

Right, I suppose this is theoretically possible here too (I'm in Austria), though I haven't looked into it that carefully, because all the options here seem to cost more than my current bank account and as far as I can tell still require a smartphone.

I wouldn't necessarily mind a dedicated piece of hardware, but if it's dedicated hardware, I feel like the bank ought to provide it, not make me pay for it. And I'd much rather it be a generic piece of hardware that can also be used as a second authentication factor for other things, like a Yubikey. I've looked around but have not found any banks that offer this. The only one I had heard of no longer offers it.

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