New Postbank app causes trouble: financial assistant successor debuts with error messages

At the turn of the year, Postbank wanted to stamp out the “financial assistant” with a new banking app.

But the transition is bumpy - the customers are annoyed.

Bonn – Like many everyday things, going to the bank is becoming increasingly digital.

Thousands of people now use so-called online banking to transfer money, keep an eye on their account balance or manage payments.

For this purpose, Postbank previously offered the “financial assistant”, which is now to be replaced by the new Postbank app.

However, the start is not very glamorous, customers are asked to be patient.

Postbank launches new app – however, many customers cannot use the service

The transition from the old to the new system appears to be plagued by a number of difficulties.

Postbank, which recently made a name for itself with mass terminations due to a lack of approval for negative interest rates, probably wished for the transition from the "financial assistant" to the Postbank app to be quicker.

Instead of a seamless switch to the Google Cloud-based system, customers are now in the digital queue.

The reason: Contrary to expectations, the new app is not yet available for all customers.

“Over the New Year's weekend, Postbank transferred some of its customers to a new online and mobile banking technology platform.

These customers can already use the new Postbank app,” a press spokesman announced when asked by

.

Postbank app: Customers have to expect long waiting times

On the other hand, all those whose data has not yet been implemented in the new system will have to be patient – ​​and possibly for a long time.

"By the middle of the year, all Postbank customers who use online and mobile banking will have been transferred to the new platform," says the financial service provider.

Customers then received a “personal cover letter”.

In the meantime, you should continue to use the “financial assistant” that has been offered so far.

.

If you don't want to have any bank details on your smartphone, this is of course not affected.

The previous app is also required to switch to the new tool.

Therefore, customers should not remove the old application from their devices until they can successfully access the new system.

In the course of this, you could, by the way, implement a few tips to make online banking generally more secure.

Postbank: New app well intentioned, but probably not well done

It is not known which system the bank uses to process customer accounts.

It is easy to check whether you belong to the group of Postbank mandates that have already been processed: If it is not your turn yet, you will receive an error message when you download the app that the app is not yet available.

Because of the many warnings about ever new scams in the online banking sector, this of course alarms consumers.

But even customers who are already using the new app are not very enthusiastic.

Although the transfer menu is better than in the "financial assistant", various other functions are not yet available.

The dissatisfaction of the customers is reflected in the reviews of the new app, which should be further developed according to the needs of the customers.

With an average rating of 1 out of 5, the users gave a clear conclusion.

But Postbank is not alone: ​​in a study by Stiftung Warentest, only four banking apps were rated “good”.

List of rubrics: © IMAGO/Rüdiger Wölk