Best & Worst Online Banking experience

username

Worst: Santander's online banking by a country mile - the reminders above of the picture and memorable phrase bring back bad memories. I'm glad to see it has improved.

Virgin Credit Cards - the app and entire platform is awful. No web access (anymore) and the app crashes often. Their developers also have an appallng knowledge of Greek mythology (or the software is written in lands far away); referring to my 'Virgin Money Pegagus Mastercard' in the OTP texts. Which I can presume is some sort of internal codename for Virgin Atlantic clients.

I don't understand why Nationwide's online banking gets such a kicking - yes it looks a little outdated design-wise but it's functional and does the job.

Rob5342

The Virgin credit card app has been pretty bad for me too. It's always saying "there has been a problem please phone us" and the only way to get it working again is to restart my phone. It's been like that for years on three different phones (pretty good ones too)

The worst thing about Nationwide is having to use a card reader, they seem to be living in 2005.

pridehappy

It's probably best to rate them all on a scale of 1-10:

Nationwide Building Society | 6/10 - The mobile app is functional and quite well laid out. Viewing transactions is easy and applying for new products within the app is a breeze. Authenticating payments is also good and pleased they are slowly phasing out the card readers. It's their internet banking which lets them down, definitely hasn't had much focus and is really dated. The transactions page is a mess and fed it back to them they need to upgrade it. 

Santander | 4/10 - The mobile app is definitely over-complicated and trying to access simple functions can be difficult in the sea of options. Sure, the app has a lot of capabilities but it isn't clear or well set out. I find it weird that for most topics, you have to 'chat' with the bot which is actually just a system, I'd much prefer just to have a setting page to switch it. Logging on isn't great either and had many delays with payments. Internet banking is just as dated as Nationwide and has very poor design too.

HSBC | 5/10 - Quite a modern but the restrictions on the mobile app are ridiculous, simple stuff can't be done on the app which really lets it down. Internet banking is a little bit better than Santander and Nationwide, although still not great and the physical security key never worked.

first direct | 4/10 - The mobile app is nearly identical to HSBC although seems a little more clunky to use, and really disappointing for what is meant to be a 'digital' bank.

Virgin Money (Current Accounts) | 8/10 - Controversial, I know. The mobile app is full of rich functionality, such as spending pots and tags, which are so useful although other mainstream banks don't seem to offer them. It's very aesthetically pleasing and the internet banking is the best of the bunch, you can see they invested in both during the rebrand.

Virgin Money (Credit Cards) | 3/10 - I'd love them to combine the credit cards app with the current accounts app, as although the credit cards app works, it isn't great and feels like something you'd find around 2015. No internet banking ability at all.

Tesco Bank (Credit Cards) | 7/10 - Functional and easy to use, both the app and internet banking. Nothing to set them out from the rest, but definitely a good contender.

Halifax (Credit Cards & Savings) | 7/10 - Again, very similar to Tesco Bank. Time has been invested into it and it works well with a little more functionality than Tesco.

Lloyds Bank | 2/10 - Surprising, as it's very similar to Halifax although had quite a few issues recently including payments not working Lloyds is uncooperative in solving them, so it falls short on many major categories. Sad as the app design itself and internet banking are good.

ryan92

The Co-Operative Bank have an abolutely appauling online banking service. Very outdated, no pending transactions and generally looks quite dated.