Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
I saw people say this a couple of times and still don’t quite know what that means.
I mean I will respect EPI’s wishes for only Android and iOS users to use Wero, and not use it, but can’t say I understand what “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” in this context is supposed to tell me.
Feel free to ignore my rants btw, I know they are inconsequential. It’s just that you can only read so many threads about mobile operating systems that aren’t US controlled where someone immediately goes “But will my banking app work on this?” “I can’t use this if my banking app doesn’t work on it” “I need my banking app to work to use this” “banking app” “banking app” “banking app”. Personally I’ve never used one of those banking apps and don’t plan to, as long as they are platform locked and have no open documented interfaces, but they are obviously just one of the many pieces of software that prevent people from using something other than an US controlled mobile OS.
I don’t quite remember if it was https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/eu_app_stores/ but it have been. I had still “pirated” my public transport app from the google play store for an android phone without play services at this time and briefly talked with the speaker about it. I think that was the time that really convinced me to just not support any exclusive apps anymore. I mean in the end it doesn’t matter if it was that specific talk or not, because the issues stay the same, only the years change.
and why don’t they do that now?
Sideload from where? Aurora Store works by using a pool of real Google Accounts that google may ban at any time. Third party websites that host android apps typically won’t have a license to redistribute proprietary apps, but they also are somewhat tolerated I guess. On top of that the typical end user will have a hard time verifying that apps from third party hosting sites will not be tampered with and re-signed with a different key.
With banking apps it’s also like 50:50 if they work on an AOSP phone without google play services, or on aliendalvik on SailfishOS or on waydroid on Ubuntu Touch and other open smartphone OS. Personally on my Ubuntu Touch phone I don’t bother with waydroid, running a stripped down android in a container doesn’t seem like a good model to me. If Europe actually wants to “standardize” on Android Apps, we should first have a portable android runtime with a well defined set of APIs that apps are restricted to using in order to be portable.
They could have mandated to integrate Wero into Onlinebanking web interfaces, right next to instant SEPA transactions. They could have made Wero an open API like extending the 20+ year old HBCI/FinTS standards. Lock in to proprietary apps exclusively distributed in google’s and apple’s store is a conscious choice and not one I need to find “better” than anything else.
GNU Taler shows how you can do it right, but of course for really open systems there is no big ad campaign money.
Europe fears that the disabling of the systems of, for example, Mastercard and Visa can be used to put political pressure on the continent. European banks believe that Wero should become the European alternative to this.
If google and apple remove the european banking apps from their stores, there is no official channel to get to wero anymore. The google play store and apple app store most likely has the ability to uninstall apps without user interaction too.
People who don’t like this dependency in the first place will not be using wero anyway.
Am I just living in a different reality to everyone else?
Are you both arguing that we don’t need banking on anything but iOS and Android because people won’t switch, and that people won’t switch because banking only works on iOS and Android?
Btw: Banking works of course on my non-Android/non-iOS Smartphones. Somehow the banks have zero trust issues in letting me use their Onlinebanking Website from these devices. With my hardware QR Tan generator I can easily make instant SEPA transfers using these devices. But if I see a Wero QR code, I have no means to send money to the receiver.