2nd phone for online banking

pallys

pallys

pallys

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2 Jul 2004
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Hi folks,

Can you recommend a second/backup phone that will be left at home and will be purely used for online banking and managing ISA.

Want to do this for security reasons.

I have narrowed down to below I think but is there something else I should be considering?
Budget around £140 max.

Samsung A16 5G - £135
Redmi Note 14 - £139

Both of these are giving android updates till 2030. Bit worried about the A16 being too slow and the redmi probably too many adverts.

Thoughts welcome.
 
I have a Samsung AO2s for doing my dads online banking, works fine. Yea it's a bit slow, but perfectly fine for banking.
The A16 is more powerful.
Sits there for about 4 days as well before needing a charge.
 
I'd probably lean towards the more established brands like Samsung just in case but you can pick up pretty decent Oppo phones around the £100 mark - I use the last model A5 as a backup phone.
 
pallys said:
Want to do this for security reasons.
Click to expand...

Cheapest iPhone you can get still in support. Got an standard 11 for £70 last year, had a cracked back but works fine screen is good, battery is over 90%. Will replace it when it goes out of support and spend ~£30 to upgrade it.
 
pallys said:
Hi folks,

Can you recommend a second/backup phone that will be left at home and will be purely used for online banking and managing ISA.

Want to do this for security reasons.

I have narrowed down to below I think but is there something else I should be considering?
Budget around £140 max.

Samsung A16 5G - £135
Redmi Note 14 - £139

Both of these are giving android updates till 2030. Bit worried about the A16 being too slow and the redmi probably too many adverts.

Thoughts welcome.
Click to expand...

genuinely curious - what "security" reasons are you concerned about?
 
Make sure the area where you keep the new phone is a well built faraday cage!
 
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Finners said:
I'd guess having phone pinched or lost and then losing access to online banking until it's sorted.
Click to expand...

Seems a very un-necessary cost and hassle to buy a phone to keep at home.

What happens if your out and about and need to make a payment to someone, or loose you bank card and can't block it till you get home?

Do you not use google wallet on your phone for payments? If so, why then NOT have banking on it?

Do you keep your house keys at home? Or on you? Surely that's the same thing if you loose your house keys?
 
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booyaka said:
Seems a very un-necessary cost and hassle to buy a phone to keep at home.

What happens if your out and about and need to make a payment to someone, or loose you bank card and can't block it till you get home?

Do you not use google wallet on your phone for payments? If so, why then NOT have banking on it?

Do you keep your house keys at home? Or on you? Surely that's the same thing if you loose your house keys?
Click to expand...

Hey I'm not the OP, I have the banking app on my phone for all those reasons :p
 
booyaka said:
Seems a very un-necessary cost and hassle to buy a phone to keep at home.

What happens if your out and about and need to make a payment to someone, or loose you bank card and can't block it till you get home?

Do you not use google wallet on your phone for payments? If so, why then NOT have banking on it?

Do you keep your house keys at home? Or on you? Surely that's the same thing if you loose your house keys?
Click to expand...
It's just risk management and what you are comfortable with I guess. I don't need to have access to obscene amounts of money available on my daily driver phone.

I don't use nfc/Google wallet and the only cards I carry have minimal cash in them. If I need to make a large transfer whilst out, very rare like buying a car, then I'll take this backup phone.

If I lose my card then I'll phone the bank straight away to cancel the card, don't need to wait till I get home. This is what you'd have to do if you got mugged of your daily driver phone.

I don't trust banks to refund my money if I got mugged at knife point having to handover my mobile and banking codes.

Samsung A16 5G is being delivered today, I'll leave a little review once I got it up and running.
 
booyaka said:
Seems a very un-necessary cost and hassle to buy a phone to keep at home.

What happens if your out and about and need to make a payment to someone, or loose you bank card and can't block it till you get home?

Do you not use google wallet on your phone for payments? If so, why then NOT have banking on it?

Do you keep your house keys at home? Or on you? Surely that's the same thing if you loose your house keys?
Click to expand...

I guess if you only have one account with one bank I could see your point.

However, when you have ISA's, and savings accounts and mortgage accounts etc. why take all that wherever you go, you wouldn't have done in the past when it was done in person at the bank, you did't take your building society book to the pub on a Friday that had your life savings in it, and you didn't take your mortgage book I assume?

Losing house keys is nothing like it at all either.
 
Fair enough - each to their own - Personally I don't worry about anything like that.

My phone is also my car key (tesla) but again - never bothered thinking or worrying about it. If something happens I'll deal with it at the time.
 
All those banking apps are locked behind codes or biometrics anyway, how will someone pinch your banking stuff if they can't get in to those apps even /if/ they managed to get into the phone?

Unless it's a socially engineered literal physical effort to pinch your biometrics and then your phone and then your codes which, let's face it, unless you are famous or something, then the chances are highly unlikely.
 
Agreed, I think I'd be more worried about this device left at home that has access to all things valuable.

Is there a reason you want this single point of failure device rather than just banking online on a PC backed with TFA on your phone?
pallys said:
This is what you'd have to do if you got mugged of your daily driver phone.
Click to expand...
Why would I cancel credit cards if my phone got stolen?

**EDIT** As said though I guess, each to their own and I guess we shouldn't derail the thread.
 
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I can't see a logical reason for this either, it may seem safer but I doubt it is. It's also an expense and any cheap phone you buy is likely to fall out of OS and therefor app update support much quicker.

Any theft of funds whereby someone has stolen your phone would almost certainly be protected and covered. Most decent savings accounts also only allow you to withdraw to a previously nominated bank account and you'd just keep what you need on a monthly basis in a current account.

It seems an expense and faff for no real security gains.
 
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