[Tharre]

> Not in Spain. I can access my bank's website but I can't do anything without their bank app.

I don't know about Spain specifically, but as far as I understand it no bank in the European Economic Area + UK should allow banking via just the website alone anymore, because of the "Revised Payment Services Directive" (PSD2) regulation.

Essentially, banks are required to implement "strong customer authentication", which in essence is just multi-factor authentication with a password + either biometrics or a security device of some sort.

And in practise that means a banking app, because most people do not want a separate token they have to buy and can lose. Though a lot of banks do offer those as well.

[askonomm]

In Estonia you can easily do banking via the website on all the banks (LHV, Swedbank, SEB). That said, we do have it all integrated with our digital-ID (which every ID card has private keys encoded into with a PIN you know) so it's not like you can access it with a simple password (our online voting works the same way).

[edoceo]

Can the PIN change? How to issue new key if needed? How does it integrate with the voting?

[gunapologist99]

TOTP not accepted?

(When will people learn that biometrics are not another factor: they're entirely public and irrevocable. It's not just security theater, but Apple & Google know that this forces you into their ecosystem, which should be illegal. Of course, Brussels is full of rubes anyway.)

[Tharre]

The question is what generated that TOTP code. The banks must ensure that they "are independent, in that the breach of one does not compromise the reliability of the others," as article 4(30) states. That text is vague as hell, but published opinion of the European Banking Authority on the matter[0] is:

"a device could be used as evidence of possession, provided that there is a ‘reliable means to confirm possession through the generation or receipt of a dynamic validation element on the device’"

So in essence the TOTP has to be bound to the device in a way that prevents users from just extracting the secret and putting in in their password manager. Hypothetically that would still allow Yubikeys and other security keys that provide attestation from the factory, but in practise banks probably don't want to deal with the support headache and just provide their own, like the TAN generator mentioned by other commentors.

Two other highlights from the interpretation of the EBA:

"App installed on the device" -> not sufficient/compliant

"In the case of an SMS, and as highlighted in Q&A 4039, the possession element ‘would not be the SMS itself, but rather, typically, the SIM-card associated with the respective mobile number’."

"SIM-card associated with the mobile number" - is that even technically possible? Do mobile carriers provide a API for banks to verify that a number still corresponds to the same SIM card? If so I've never heard of it.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20191207213213/https://eba.europ...

[vbarrielle]

TOTP not accepted, because the confirmation for payment must include the amount to be paid, which cannot be done under TOTP as far as I know.

[severino]

> And in practise that means a banking app, because most people do not want a separate token they have to buy and can lose.

It can be SMS. As said in another comment, the main banks in Spain offer this authentication method while being PSD2 compliant. Some also offer a card with coordinates. So it's not mandatory in any way to use a banking app.

[Tharre]

Probably not for much longer though. Several countries, including mine, have already banned SMS 2FA for banking, and it's likely that that will be implemented for all of Europe in the near future, possibly with PSD3. Not that SMS 2FA was ever a good idea in the first place.

But yes banking apps are not mandatory, and likely won't be in the near future either, though the alternatives are treated a bit like second class citizens.

[fodmap]

My bank offered that option but not anymore. The use of their app is mandatory now.

Edit to add this anecdote. My bank told me I need to use their app because SMS is not secure, but you need to activate their app using an SMS code!