HelloChat – Wallet & Messenger 12+

HelloChat 非常之好用在夜市里，我喜欢，大家都来尝试一下啊！好方便。

Dear HelloChat 方便好用, thank you for your review. We are happy to see you are enjoying using our app! More features and promotions will come soon, please follow us on social media to receive the latest news! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach us at support@hellochat.com, we are always happy to help!

I’m not entirely sure what this app is attempting to do, but it kind of seems suspect and I’m not sure if it’s intentional or not.

The sign up process was confusing, asking for a password without linking it to an email address or phone. The password requirements were minimal beyond a min 8 character length (which I feel should be strict for a financial app). It’s not until later, well after the initial setup, that you are asked asked for contact info like phone number and email address.

The means of linking a bank account are also suspect, asking for account/transit number instead of using proven/accredited technology like Plaid. This immediately made me hesitant to provide that information given the prolific scams that can be found asking for exactly that information, without providing any security notice regarding the safety of my private/sensitive financial data.

Assuming that you’ve gotten this far, there is then the concern about transfers. Within the app I can change my name to whatever I want (including the ability to impersonate someone else), which seems worrisome for an app where I’ll be transferring money to/from people. There doesn’t seem to be any way to confirm someone’s identity other than knowing their 4-digit user ID, which puts the onus on me to verify contacts. And for that matter, you don’t even have to set your “name” as a name at all - it can be any string of characters I’d want.

Speaking of then user ID, I also seem to be able to randomly guess people’s user ID number since they’re only 4 characters long. Just type in 4 digits, and if someone has that number I can then immediately see their name & photo without having to submit a friend/contact request, making it even easier to try to impersonate someone.

All this is to say that, while I’m sure the app is well intentioned, I am worried about some of the security (or lack thereof) involved. If I’m going to be providing access to my banking information/financial institution, there is a level of information, security, and verification that at this point the app does not provide in order to give me the piece of mind it assumes I should have.

Thank you SchellBell86 for your review. Your honest, detailed feedback has not gone unnoticed. We agree wholeheartedly with a lot of what you wrote. The development team has received your input and made some improvements to address your concerns.

Firstly, user registration now requires both an email address and a phone number to complete. Passwords also require at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase, one symbol and a minimum of 8 characters. Once you log in, you can search for people but all you will be able to see is their name and HelloChat ID.

As far as linking your bank card goes, we are now partnered with Flinks to verify your identity and ensure your sensitive financial information is not accessible to anyone but yourself. Flinks uses AES-256 hardware encryption to protect your data and works in concert with the banks. Here is a link to their website if you wish to know more about the company, their 24/7 response team, and their business practices: https://flinks.io/blog/security-at-flinks-faqs/. Please also know that we are a registered money services business and hold an MSB license to legally conduct financial transactions as a business entity. To find out what that entails, go here: https://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/msb-esm/intro-eng. You can find us (CheckPay) at https://www10.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/msb-esm/public/msb-search/search-by-name/.

I hope this eases your worries about using the app. Thank you again for leaving a thorough message for our team to unpack and get right. If you live in the Greater Vancouver area, we would like to invite you to come to our headquarters for user testing. If this is of interest to you, please send us an email at support@hellochat.com.

This app is super easy to setup and use. I was setup and ready to go within 3min.

Dzu from business operations was also super helpful and patient while he was explaining the app to us.

Dear j.elliee, thank you for your review. We are happy to see you are enjoying using our app! More features and promotions will come soon, please follow us on social media to receive the latest news! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach us at support@hellochat.com, we are always happy to help!