The purpose of security features is to bring safety to users without sacrificing ease of use, but that does not seem to be the case with Bank Alfalah’s new feature for its mobile app. The app has recently introduced a new feature that prevents you from logging in from two different mobile phones in the name of security.
As expected, this has caused a stir among several users as they are unable to access and manage their bank accounts from two different mobile phones. Customers who were using the same account on one or more smartphones are having trouble logging into their bank accounts. What’s worse is that Bank Alfalah did not notify its customers about the new update.
Some users have found a workaround for this issue, but it is not working for everyone. If you clear up the app data from the settings of your phone, it may let you access your account in some cases.
According to the bank, customers will need to call and request to unbind the account from their mobile device if they wish to sign in through another one. You will then need to register on the second phone with a new password and PIN. Choosing a different password each time is compulsory.
It is worth mentioning that customers are still able to sign in to the same account through multiple computers, which beats the whole purpose of the new security feature.
We reached out to Bank Alfalah for an official comment. Here is what they had to say.
Our latest security feature binds a principal device of the customers. We understand this may have caused some inconvenience to only those customers who were accessing our digital banking from multiple devices. In the next few weeks we will introduce a slicker digital process of multiple device registration for the convenience of such customers who like to access digital banking on multiple devices without compromising on the security of 99% of our customer base who conduct baking on a single device.
The bank says that they are working on a new feature that will let users register multiple mobile devices for a single bank account. It should be available within a “few weeks”.
Last but not the least, the bank has said that 99% of their customers use the banking app on a single phone meaning only 1% of customers are affected by this problem. Since the bank has over 5 million customers at the moment, this means that around 50,000 people are affected by this issue.
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