[ { "text": "I've just moved to Sydney and am hoping to open a bank account at a bank that has 'sms banking' or 'mobile banking' options - you text a specific phone number affiliated with the bank and it sends a run-down of your balances at that moment. This is something that my bank had while I lived in America.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "I don't have a smartphone - I use a Light Phone these days. I like that the sms feature helps me get my balances without using an app or having to call the bank.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Does anyone know which bank(s) offer this? From searching so far, it seems to be QBank and Bank of Queensland, and I'm not totally sure either allows foreigners to open an account. (Plus a handful of banks I couldn't use, like Teachers.)", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "As I investigate this, I'd welcome other suggestions, ideally of larger banks that have a Sydney presence. HSBC AU offers an option to do this for business banking but I'm not clear they have the option for personal banking, though I'm investigating that too!", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "I know this doesn't answer your question but SMS in inherently insecure. You will find that most major corporations are moving away from SMS.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "ID recommend posting this in r/AusFinance. This sub is pretty quiet at the best of times.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "No bank as far as I know, but I do know some banks have a fairly open APIs and you could do much better than SMS them for a bank balance.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "You could write your own webserver that accepts SMS and forwards you your bank balance based on API token auth.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "See: https://developer.up.com.au/", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Does the Commonwealth still do phonebank? I used to use this years ago - not a text but you rang the bank's number, input your client number and password and you could go to a menu with banking options, including balance inquiries. This is old tech - most people these days would just use an app.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Gross", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "I’m just curious, why don’t you have a smart phone?", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "My bank (originally a credit union) has Internet Banking and an app but years ago, these options weren't in existence and it seemed high tech at the time that we had Redidial, which is telephone banking.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "The service allowed transfer of funds between one's own accounts or to accounts of other members, interest earned, order a statement, the account balance and details of the last five transactions + the previous five transactions to those, all for the cost of a local call (higher of course, on mobiles).", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "I haven't used it for a long time because internet banking is so much more convenient but as far as I know, it's still available and there's no charge to use it.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "I'd say it's probably safer than using SMS, as you need a PIN to access your account.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "The only downside is if someone knows your member number and PIN, they could access your account and possibly your funds (if they had an account of their own as well).", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Pretty sure ING and Commonwealth do phone banking (among others). Like others have suggested you would have to ring them up to get your balance etc.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "You can use the phone banking service. Most banks have an automated phone banking system that reads out balances and last 5 transactions.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Agree that sms is insecure but disagree that major banks are taking steps to move away from sms.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "With commbank and their net app requires sms 2fa to use.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "I have a keychain 2fa hard token with combank and the app doesn’t work with it at all. It’s a total pain in the ass.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Most major banks in aus still use 2fa and outsource the responsibility of security to the major telcos", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "And the major telcos also do a pretty shit job of security.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Thanks for your response. Would you mind clarifying a bit what you mean? Do you think there's any loophole through which someone could access my account if I had set up SMS banking via eg the Internet? Even if all that was happening via SMS was just the balance request and response?", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "To clarify (in case this is what you meant) - I'm not worried if a stranger steals my phone and sees my balance. Or a stranger somehow gets secure info from the bank and sees the SMS messages that state my balance. I'd be worried only if a stranger could actually access the funds themselves (whether by stealing my phone or breaching the bank's data in some way). Are you saying that using SMS texting would increase the chances of this happening?", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "I personally would love to get away from smart phones. Before you know it they’ll be using the front facing camera to read your facial expressions and eye movements to determine how you react to certain content. If they already aren’t.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "From a less conspiratorial perspective it’s nice to not be ‘connected’ all the time. Not that you asked me :)", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "This is super helpful, thank you! Are you able to share the name of the bank and I can see whether I'm eligible to open an account there?", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "It's incredibly easy to spoof a phone number (spoofing is actually legal to do non-maliciously . Relying on SMS for any kind of security is just not optional these days.", "extra_info": "" }, { "text": "Wait until u find out corporations already have most of ur info and r actively tracking u", "extra_info": "" } ]