BOV, you’re a good bank, but your app SUCKS!

As Christmas dawns on us, most of us go out to do the usual Christmas shopping. As of this year, I’ve decided to ditch using cash (where possible) and only use bank cards when shopping. Sounds great right? Well, almost.

I am a BOV customer and I got two main accounts with them: a Cashlink account (where my wage is deposited) and another account, which has a VISA account bound to it. Normally, I only put the money that I’ll be spending on this account, as a safety measure. This means that every time that I need to do a purchase, I use the BOV app to do the transfer. This is where it quickly goes south.

So, last time I was at Valletta doing some shopping, I went to transfer some money to my VISA account. I fired up my BOV app, logged in and bam, “Application Error”. Let’s try again – but now, when I logged in, I got disconnected from my Wi-Fi and got connected on 4G. Great, the connection dropped again! Third time’s the charm! I re-logged in, and was greeted by the beautiful “you are already logged in” message. Needless to say, I had to wait again, switch off my Wi-Fi to make sure I don’t connect to somewhere else and then actually manage to to the transfer. Far more painful than it should be!

Anyway, this was not the first time that I’ve had this issue. Actually I’m surprised when it works the first time round! I’ve been talking about this with my friends on how painful it is and one of my friends introduced me to Revolut. Basically, it’s an online bank which provides you with a very good mobile app and a MasterCard. I’ve ended up replacing my BOV VISA with the MasterCard from Revolut, and I regret nothing. There are multiple advantages to using a alternative bank, but for the scope of this blog, it’s a bit irrelevant.

So, what can BOV do to their app to win me back? Because, in reality I’d still rather do all my banking with BOV rather than an alternative bank, but BOV has so much work to do beforehand.

1) I don’t care if I’m logged in from another location

Why is this a feature in the first place? If I want to manage my money from my BOV app and BOV Internet Banking, so be it! Anyway, this issue happens because you’re disconnected from the BOV app before hitting logout. This is the worst issue of them all if I’m honest.

2) The app is slow

It seems that the app is always sluggish. Why does it take 5-10 seconds to log in and get my balance? Coming to think of it, every screen transition takes about 5-10 seconds! Hey, at least they fixed the issue of waiting a minute on “Checking Security” popup. That wasn’t fun!

3) The UI is STUPID

I got a full HD (1080*1920) screen, but it seems that the BOV app can only use 7% of the screen to place the username and key fields. Why are they so tiny? Even worse, it seems that allowing multiple users to log in from the same app is a bit daft in the first place; it should only ask for my password (and remember my user).

4) The UI is dated

I get the feeling that this application was designed when Android was still in version 2 or 3. The UI is very dated – the way that settings appear reminds me of old Android. By the way, why is the settings tab activated by a tiny hamburger icon, when clearly there’s a LOT of space available?

5) Why am I not allowed to make payments to any IBAN I desire?

I can make payments to my friends (if I got their mobile number), some list of hardcoded shops (I assume vetted by then), top up my phone and that’s it! If I need to make a payment to some IBAN, I cannot do it through the app; I’ll need to use their online portal.

6) Where is fingerprint authentication?

I assume the answer is “they can’t be bothered”. Obviously, since they haven’t done any decent update to the app since like forever, this feature is stuck in oblivion. Before I got my Revolut account, I never appreciated the comfort of logging in using your fingerprint, and believe me, it works GREAT.

7) I’d like more fine-grained security control my cards

We live in 2017, but it seems that BOV is living in 1017. Why I am not allowed to turn my VISA on and off on the fly? While you’re at it, I’d like fine-graned control on swipe payments, ATM and online payments please.

8) Where are the contactless cards?

This is a good one as well, but not related to the app per-se. It seems that although BOV has rolled out contactless cards, I haven’t got one, why’s that? I’ll just assume that I need to go through some hoops and whatnot to get my hands on one. Contactless is AWESOME by the way.

9) Why do pre-authorization payments take days to appear?

I’ve always wondered this. Sometimes payments are pre-authorized rather than an instant withdrawal. When these payments occur, I can only notice this because my book balance is different (less) then my available balance. They’re not written in the statement, for some weird reason. My Revolut account does this and it also notes that this transaction is awaiting confirmation or reversal.

10) Some other features that I’d like

  • A filterable statement, or at least sorted by month
  • Split Bill
  • Request money
  • Freeze card / account

I’m pretty sure that there are a million other things I can nitpick on, but that’s all for now. Until the next one