ABN AMRO and Rabobank no longer support mobile banking on old smartphones

Customers with certain old smartphones can no longer use the mobile banking services of ABN AMRO and Rabobank. Mobile banking apps are no longer supported for those using Android 7.0 and earlier since the latest updates. Also in older iOS versions it becomes difficult. Security cannot be guaranteed on these devices, because the operating system becomes vulnerable due to a lack of security updates, according to the banks. What versions of operating systems do you need? In this article we explain that.

To start with ABN AMRO. On the bank’s website says the following: “It’s important that your device is and stays secure. That’s why Apple and Android release security updates several times a year. You can install these updates yourself and protect your device. This happens automatically when you update your Apple iOS version or Android version.”

The bank adds that devices for which no further security updates have been released are not sufficiently protected. ABN AMRO does not consider it secure enough to allow customers to use mobile banking on older phones. This is due to the increased risk of vulnerabilities.

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So an update for the mobile banking app was rolled out on April 4, 2022, and this latest version only works on devices running at least Android version 8.0. A newer operating system is fine, of course, but on older operating systems, the app no ​​longer works.

The latest version of the Android operating system is Android 12.0. Successor 13.0 didn’t take long: the developers are already busy with beta versions.

But back to Android 7.0. This version of the Android operating system was released on August 22, 2016, nearly six years ago. The latest update followed on October 4, 2019.

Since then, this version no longer comes with updates or additional support, and ABN AMRO has been quite lenient in this regard by continuing to make updates available for their mobile banking app for some time.

So for less than one out of every hundred users, this update is really problematic. The rest are using a newer Android version that supports the ABN AMRO mobile banking app.

Then iOS and iPadOS. ABN AMRO notes that the mobile banking app can only be used on iOS 12 or higher. People with iOS/iPadOS 11 and below cannot use the app.

It’s hard to tell how many people are: unlike Android, StatCounter doesn’t provide insight into how many people are using iOS 11. iOS 11 was released on September 19, 2017 and the latest update followed on July 9, 2018, however, this operating system is now quite outdated .

In general, the time taken for software updates on Apple devices is somewhat higher than on Android devices. Therefore, it is not unrealistic to assume that even in this case, the number of people still working with iOS 11 is very small.

Not everyone has the money to constantly buy the latest and most expensive smartphones, and no one is forcing you to do so.

However, it is software law that security updates cannot be rolled out indefinitely: sometimes the operating system is so old that it does not make sense to support it anymore, also due to the low number of users.

And once an operating system stops being supported, the risk of vulnerabilities increases. Therefore, mobile banking application developers cannot infinitely guarantee security on unsupported platforms: especially in the case of sensitive financial information, the risks become unacceptably high at some point.

ABN AMRO advises customers who want to purchase a new or used device to purchase a phone that supports at least Android 10.0 or iOS 14. This ensures in any case that you can continue to use Internet banking safely via the bank’s mobile application in the coming years.

Shortly after ABN AMRO rolled out a new version of the app, Rabobank followed suit. The same goes for this app: The Rabobank Mobile Banking app can no longer be used on devices running Android 7.0 or earlier.

This is based on the same motivation as with ABN: for security reasons, it was decided not to support Android 7.0. And as we explained above, this is a problem for a very limited portion of the Dutch, as the vast majority are already using a newer version of Android.

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Remarkably, however, the Apple App Store states that iOS 11.0 or later is sufficient to install the app. Since we don’t have an old iPhone still running iOS 11.0, unfortunately we can’t do the test.

We assume that the information on the website is the most recent, also considering the above explanation regarding the small number of iOS 11 users.

Unlike ABN AMRO, Rabobank does not provide buying advice for the devices with a view to their future long-term use.

Source: ABN AMRO, Rabobank, Google Play Store, StatCounter