But your bank probably has a web portal right? You could have used that, probably. I actually did that alot from my phone actually.

Yes, but it is slower, and doesn't allow me to make small payments without the security token. Also, even checking the balance requires the security token with the web portal. Further, I'm sure that many banks don't have their web portal optimized for phone screens (because on a phone you are supposed to use their app).

But yes, it's a matter of convenience mostly.

Once upon a time, your bank probably didn't have an app either -- that isn't a strike against mobile platforms. In that same vein, having a bad web portal isn't a strike against the web as a platform, it just means your bank isn't taking full advantage (yet).

The only strike against FFOS as a platform that you mentioned was speed, and I acknowledge that web-based apps do render slower than native ones 99% of the time. The parser/execution system that handles HTML/CSS/JS is almost guaranteed to be slower than one that can handle a more limited subset (there's just less to do).

That said, speed seems like a red herring though -- just how fast do you need your banking application to be? Is the half-second you had to wait longer to see your balance really the mission-critical feature? I get that rendering speed is important, but there are lots of bloated native apps that don't render as fast as possible either.

I've got two "high street" bank accounts, and one with a fintech startup (starling). My starling bank account is app-only. My high street banks both (basically) require their mobile apps for login to their web portals.