Ally: Bank, Auto & Invest 4+

AND ANOTHER THING: What's with the "Your Ally session timed out due to inactivity" push notification? Do you really think my session timeout is so important that I need to get a push notification every time I use your app? Have you, or anyone you know, ever received that notification and said, "Oh, my Ally app session is timed out, I better do something about that"? No? Yeah, I didn't think so. And this notification can only be disabled if you completely disable all Ally notifications which is nuts. I bet this was some manager or consultant's "contribution" to the Ally app project to justify their insane salary. Please remove this useless notification or at the very least give your users the option to turn it off separately in app settings.

2024 UPDATE: So, it’s 2024 and the Ally Bank iOS app (and website) still aren’t VPN friendly. Literally every other banking app and website that I use work fine with VPNs. But Ally Bank chooses to be stuck in the past and jeopardize the security of their customers because they don’t want to spend a little money to make their app and website VPN compatible. Do better.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: Great bank and app. One problem: when my VPN is on, the app gets stuck on the loading screen. I have many other bank / brokerage iOS apps and every single one of them works flawlessly with the VPN enabled. Please update your iOS app to work with VPNs.

Hi, we hear your concern. We’ll share your feedback with our team. ^MG

For the first two or three years I used this app I had almost no issues, but over the last six months the app has been giving me a ton of problems. It is slower but more importantly the functionality is frequently broken. For several months, the account balance would not update after I made transfers unless the money was unbucketed. However, if I went to make another transfer the correct balance would be shown under the “to” and “from” pick lists so I knew the transfers were going through right away. I submitted feedback about this and talked to support who told me it might be my older iPhone because there was no similar issues reported with other users 🙄 low and behold a month later when I updated the app the problem was finally solved.

Recently, my transaction history has disappeared and I’m seeing a message that says there’s no history under the account within the last 120 days. Idk what’s going on, this wasn’t even from an update so it seems like some of their database infrastructure is breaking on the backend or something.

I love some of the features and convenience of this bank but it’s quickly becoming less convenient because of the defects.

Hi, thanks for sharing your feedback. Please give our team a call if you continue experiencing issues - for Ally Bank assistance,1-877-247-2559, or 1-855-880-2559 for Ally Invest.

I’ve used a couple of other online banking and investing apps, as well as other financial apps such as those for credit cards or loan accounts. When compared to those apps,I have found ally’s has been underwhelming, confusing, and frustrating at times. For rhe most part, I had found the user interfaces for the other apps very intuitive, easy to navigate, and have small and seemingly insignificant features that are taken for granted until you use an app that doesn’t have them. Such features include buying fractional shares of securities, without which investing in companies such as Berkshire Hathaway (stock currently valued around $450,000/share) becomes impossible to the common investor. Another capability missing from the app is the ability to manage external accounts used to fund your ally accounts - instead, there is a message that says to visit their website to manage your accounts, and while they provide the URL of the website, they could easily provide a link within that message that would take you directly to the site instead of having users exit the app, navigate to their web browser, and then manually enter the URL.

Despite how I feel about the app itself, I enjoy ally’s services. This is the only reason that I am leaving this review, in hopes that it will be viewed by the powers that be within the ally organization and that they will take action to overhaul the app.

Hi, we'll be sure to pass this message along to our team so your feedback is heard. For immediate assistance, please give us a call at 1-855-880-2559.