As long as the banking apps and such work.

Banks shouldn't have custom apps that are not mobile websites, accessible via the mobile browser just as well.

Apparently there are special auth apps storing things in secure-enclave-ish parts of the OS. Not a great match for websites.

No, that's just BS.

The web has a secure storage standard and OAuth + MFA is just as secure as anything your bank could cook up in an app. In fact, I'd be shocked if banks did a better job of security in their apps vs what browsers and standard auth flows provide.

Banks just like selling the idea that "if it's encrypted, it's secure". But trust me when I say this, bank security across the board absolutely sucks. The company I work with does financial data ingest and... yeah... There's more than a few institutions where we had to pull teeth to get them to send stuff through an encrypted transport (SFTP, for example, they want to just use FTP).

The OS/browser could give this capability to web apps via an API.

That would be a breeding ground for malware.

The capability to ...read their own keys that they set up?

You mean like the android play store already is?

When my bank didn't support my phone, I switched the bank, not the phone.

That is sensible. In sweden there's 1 single app to authenticate yourself. Strictly speaking the bank does work without, but A LOT of other stuff doesn't, making life very hard.

Perhaps you can't get the freedom without fighting for it?

People do need to rent apartments and such things, it gets cold in sweden.

I think they meant that if there is a single identity app you should petition your government to require it to run on any mobile phone rather than require one or two American companies to dictate what it can run on. Or better yet, allow people without mobile phones to also be able to rent apartments.

BankID was working just fine when I was experimenting with LineageOS without Google apps (incidentally, on a Motorola phone) last year. It is something I worry about though, seeing as they could easily stop that from working and there's no real alternative.

This could develop into a chance for a crypto wallet to shine.