Sending an e-transfer via the RBC mobile app is now nearly impossible
Since earlier this morning I've been trying to send a $10K E-Transfer (to myself at another institution, just so I can prepay my own mortgage). My limit for E-transfers is $10K, and I've successfully made transfers of this amount numerous times. I have my primary email set up with autodeposit with RBC (for receiving from others) and a secondary email (different domain) with which I have autodeposit off, so that I can selectively "receive" funds transfers into other institutions that are not RBC.
This is how it went today:
- Use the RBC mobile app on my iPhone: sign in using Face ID, then initiate the transfer. The app then sends an MFA push notification (on the same device, and I only have one phone) that requires me to Allow the transfer. It then also prompts me to enter my debit card PIN. This succeeds and puts my mobile app back at the sign-in screen. But because I have now bounced out of the E-transfer flow, I can't make the transfer.
- I repeat the process and hit "try another method" for the verification. I choose the "enter client PIN on trusted device," and it then tells me that "something went wrong."
- Remembering that since it's apparently now impossible to send an E-transfer (at least one of substantial value) from my phone, I go to my web browser. Of course, since RBC (like all the big banks) apparently can't support something like passkeys, I still need my phone nearby to allow the login via the MFA app.
- Once logged in on the web app, I re-initiate the E-transfer flow. It then sends me an MFA prompt on my device to allow the transfer. I tap Allow, but nothing happens back at my web browser. I double-checked that I didn't miss an earlier notification, or had somehow pressed an older notification, etc. Nope.
- I figure, ok, since I've already gone through the flow, let's try the trusted PIN option." I get a similar "something went wrong" error.
- I go through the E-transfer flow once again, get a new push notification, press Allow, and then get the "enter your client card PIN" prompt, I enter it, and yes, finally, I have successfully made the E-transfer!
- I then immediately notice something _extremely_ concerning: the confirmation tells me that this recipient's email is registered for autodeposit. It absolutely is not registered for autodeposit. I immediately go to my email to check, and as usual, it is offering me the choice of institution in which to deposit the transfer. So, RBC's interface here is just completely incorrect.
I'm an IT professional, and a portion of that career has been over 9 years of experience as a senior engineer in the domain of code testing and deployment, with most of that timespan being in Fintech. So, I understand the challenges of coordinating payments among many providers and long-established legacy systems. But:
It took me multiple attempts and two devices to just transfer money from one institution to another, and at the end I was shown a confirmation that made me concerned that either an account had been compromised or that I'd somehow accidentally signed up for autodeposit in another institution. But, it looks like this was simply a bug or untested code path that was deployed.
Some of these papercuts today don't happen every time I go through this flow, but the issue of being unable to approve a transaction from the same mobile device used to initiate it has been one for a while now (at least a month?).
I'm used to tolerating buggy software. I'm used to things like incidents due to code that poorly handles leap years. So, I rarely complain. But that this user experience is possible from the largest bank in Canada is completely depressing. It also leads me to think that the engineering culture at larger financial institutions is light years behind. (Something I already suspected, but.. this kind of situation would have been an all-hands-on-deck incident at previous companies I have worked in)
Folks in my region very commonly use banking E-transfers to send each other money for things like buying/selling items from Facebook Marketplace, splitting bills, etc. This is often done in-person on phones. With this current situation, I'm simply going to be moving my chequing balances out of RBC (as part of a complete transition away from RBC). I have been already trying to move more things out of RBC, but this situation really feels like the straw breaking the camel's back.