First Direct iPhone Mobile Bank App Disected

In an effort to keep on top of the current mobile strategy, and since they made some changes to make logging on easier I thought I’d take a look at what First Direct have done with their new app.

Although this is the first change since the app was released 6 months ago I was interested as it sounded like the bank themselves had made the change.

At first glance the app looks and feels like a ‘hybrid’ – a bit of native code wrapping up a web app

So I pulled apart the package to have a look at how it ticks…

The package immediately revealed some cached web content – in this case a little bit of helper javascript…

It looks to me like this script was recently added to inject html to make the log in process better, but not as slick as it could be. There are comments on the app store as to why they can’t simply use a pin – I’ll explain why they can’t later.

So capturing the ssl traffic between the iphone app UIWebViews and their server, shows that it is using the same web site that is used for their online and mobile browser app…

The above shows some of the native -> javascript navigation script so the clicks on the native tab bar effect a navigation in the web app.

You can also see plenty of references to jQuery Touch throughout the pages – nice choice.

So why could they not introduce a basic pin to log on if they wanted too? Well the advantage of simply wrapping up an existing web site into a mobile web site and then wrapping that in some native framework UIWebView code is that you can get something useable to market quickly and without the full expense of implementing a third party mobile solution. The disadvantage is that you are bound by the same back end logic that drives the core web site.

My opinion – is that it is great to see a bank looking at this hybrid html and native code, and that they are using open source frameworks like jquery – is it innovation? CorpComms DigiAwards thinks so according to this tweet.

I’d have liked to have seen some HTML5 local storage included to cache data locally, they could have styled it for ipad, they could have used local storage to cache the session so it stays logged in for 5 minutes even after you switch away as some simple starters – I’m sure they will improve things.

I think because they have used JQuery Touch you could claim that it is an HTML5 app, which is kinda innovative.

My view is that whilst the app itself is not especially innovative, having a bank take this kind of agile lightweight approach to getting something done certainly is. Keep it coming FD.