Sbanken/DNB a.k.a. ApplePay support workaround
I started thinking about all this due to recent changes in the banking market here in Norway. However, if that is of no interest to you, skip straight to § "The workaround".
Sbanken and DNB
Recently in Norway one of most interesting banks, Sbanken (formerly Skandiabanken) was bought by their largest competitor, DNB. This worried a lot of Sbanken customers as DNB is generally seen as dinosaur in the Norwegian banking world. The perception (right or wrong) is that only old people would select DNB and anyone else who uses it is either a fool or joined a different bank initially, only for DNB to later buy it. 😆
Sbanken on the other hand has been innovative and really shaken up the market (indeed it was the first online-only bank in Norway back in 2000) and for the 20+ years of their existence they have won numerous (mostly back-to-back) awards for customer satisfaction.
When DNB bought Sbanken it was promised they would not alter it for the worse and that it would continue to run "semi" independent. It could still innovate but would also have the backing of a banking behemoth. So the best of both worlds, right… right? However the first major change that many customers noticed was dropping of support for ApplePay. This is a truly massive deal in rich Norway because iOS has a gigantic 65% marketshare for mobile operating systems, as I write this. [Yes… you read that right!]
Mobile Operating System Market Share Norway [Statcounter]
Politics and competition
Why would they do this? Well DNB has never supported ApplePay via their own bank. If you look on their page explaining why, the key bit for me is this (roughly translated) comment,
Apple is the only provider to deny other mobile wallets access to the NFC chip in their devices.
Derfor tilbyr vi ikke Apple Pay til våre kunder [DNB, in Norwegian]
Clearly DNB believes this to be anti-competitive. Indeed DNB, along with a bunch more big European banks have raised this very issue with the EU competition authorities.
And if you know anything about DNB you can also see why this would be close to DNB's heart. While their detractors might mock them for lack of innovation, DNB founded a mobile payment solution themselves, called "Vipps". Now Vipps is not a complete rival and replacement to ApplePay in the way say Google Pay is. How and where you use it is not identical to ApplePay. It is not (currently) great for very fast, in-store payments (where Apple Pay and Google Pay excel) but it works nicely for online (Nordic based) services, public transport payment, restaurants that use web based menu ordering (which was particularly popular during the pandemic), and it really shines when used for person to person transactions and donations, or with small market stalls and the like (that do not have full payment terminals). So whilst not identical, there is some overlap and Vipps is also very widely used in the Nordics (75% of Norway's population has the app installed). In addition if Vipps had access to the NFC chip during payments they might evolve to be more of a direct competitor.
Vipps - Norges mest populære betalingsapp [DNB, in Norwegian]
Vipps i tall [Vipps, in Norwegian]
Vipps payment solutions [DNB, in English]
So is this only about Vipps? Yes and no. No doubt that is a very large part of the reason but it is worth noting that DNB is not blocking all Vipps rivals. They do support Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay. In addition Vipps was made an independent company in 2017 and later merged with similar companies in Denmark and Finland, such that it is now jointly owned by multitude of banks. However… DNB still owns just over 50%. 😉
Over 100 banker satser sammen på Vipps [DNB, in Norwegian]
So you can see DNB's gripe and maybe… just maybe… they have something of a point. And given their size DNB has been able afford to refuse to work with Apple's closed solution. Yes they obviously lost some customers to those that did support ApplePay but as the biggest banking player in Norway, they clearly have been able to continue to turn a profit.
As this stage if you were a DNB customer and you stuck with them despite the lack of ApplePay, you probably fell into one of three categories:
- You were completely oblivious to all of this
- You knew about it but don't have an Apple phone or did not care enough to switch banks over it
- You supported DNB's position
On the other hand Sbanken customers may well have chosen their bank in part because they supported ApplePay. Indeed it is feasible that they may even have left DNB and gone to Sbanken specifically because of this feature. Thus as you can rightly imagine, many Sbanken customers are furious and feel justified in their argument that, "they knew DNB would ruin it!".
The workaround
So if you use a bank that does not support ApplePay (or did and has dropped it, like Sbanken), and this is/was a key banking feature for you, what are your options? Obviously you could switch banks but… that is a hassle. The other obvious option would be to keep your main accounts where they are but use a different card, such as a credit card (from a rival bank) for all your ApplePay payments and just remember to pay off in full each month to avoid any fees. However in Norway, where in my experience the general public is credit card adverse (compared to say the UK or US), that is an outright horrifying solution.
So no, forget those two, I have another solution. A service to proxy the payment over to your debit card, specifically the "Curve App". Firstly for those not familiar, let me explain what Curve is and what it is supposed to be for.
What is Curve?
Curve provides a way for people who like or need to use multiple credit and debit cards to only to carry one card (or perhaps none if they use ApplePay, Google Pay, etc.). Basically they provide a card (or just virtual card number), which you use to pay as normal. Via their app the payment is then diverted to one of your "real cards" from any of your financial providers. You can either switch which underlying card will get charged manually (in the app) or more interestingly setup various rules, e.g. all payments for "groceries", should go to card A but everything else card B. Alternatively, any payment up to 200€ should go to card X but anything higher should go to Y. Also you can have fallbacks like, if a card fails redirect it on the fly to card Z (which they call "anti embarrassment mode"). They can also do fancy stuff like switch the underlying provider for a payment days after you made the payment.
Curve operates on a freemium model. Their simplest account has no ongoing costs (other than a one off payment for the Curve card) but can only redirect through two real cards, and has limited rules. Their more fancy options have monthly costs and in addition to allowing for lots of underlying cards and rules, come with further bundled differentiators, like forms of insurance and airport lounge access.
How does this help with ApplePay?
So here is the clincher. The Curve card itself supports ApplePay and for many people that is all they need. So you get the free account (yes you pay a one off fee for the initial card) put in your (non ApplePay) debit card in the Curve app and then add your Curve card number to ApplePay. When you pay the payment goes like this "Curve -> Your normal card -> your bank" and that is it!
Gotchas
Ok, there are some complications. 😉
Firstly Curve is a little bit "tricksy" (read: 'dark patterns'). When you sign up it is intentionally non-obvious how you select the free version. They will try and place you on "Curve X", the cheapest of their paid options. If this happens to you just go into the app afterwards, click on "Account -> Manage your plan" and downgrade before the first month is up.
Secondly be aware that all payments that go via Curve will be marked with "Crv*" in front (e.g. "Crv* Netflix" will show on your statement if you used it to pay for Netflix) and they will all have the payment category "e-commerce" rather than their real category. If your online banking allows you to automatically look at spending by category this will mess it up. You can go into the Curve app and see everything labelled and categorised correctly there but of course this is one extra step. On the flip side if you actually did use Curve as intended this is potentially fine as you can see all your card spending organised correctly across different banks in one place (inside the Curve app).
Finally there is the obvious problem of having one more app and one more thing to manage in your life. Though for the most part when used like this it is a setup once and can be (largely) forgotten about afterwards.
One last thing. I have explained this as best I understand it and with my own limited testing. I have also avoided giving your an affiliate link, so you know I am not just trying to sell you something for my own benefit but a disclaimer, you should do more of your own research. Banking is important and I may have missed something or Curve could change their options or try and trip you up (you will notice I mentioned dark patterns above). If this does not work for you or worse causes you problems I accept no responsibility. I am just trying to help out but I fully admit I am no expert!
Anyway, that is it for now. I hope this was useful to someone or at least mildly interesting.
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[✍ 2023-05-30 16:20 +0200] A point was raised by one of the people who read this. If Curve is used they will have access to all transaction data that you make with via their card. You are trusting them as you would any other bank or financial institution not to share this or use it in some nefarious way. Arguably you may be trusting them more than any one bank if you were to add all your card numbers into their system, since then they would see all your spending across multiple financial institutions. They will also know all your card numbers. Consider that you are paying for some convenience with potential additional loss of privacy.
Here are some pages and posts by Curve on this matter:
Curve Help - What are you doing with my data?
Curve Help - Are my details safe with Curve?
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/gemlog/