But here, no, only some bad players require a smartphone and an account to OS providers to make the bank account work.
It's not a matter of free, it's a matter of "certified": they make you use third party devices, but if anything happens they may make it your fault on the legal side. If a device is part of the banking agreement, the device must come from the bank and the responsibility must rely entirely on the bank.
> app
In all of this: how can it be remotely possible to think that in order to get a critical service - accessing your money - one could be supposed to have a contract with some remote alien party (the "App Store")? Because I am guessing your bank does not directly give you the "app". Already this makes me wonder about how the population can be blind to unbelievable levels to the systemic insanity.
Some of them do not require any smartphone - but some of them require that you make a contract with an uncontrolled firm on a different continent to have a money deposit account. And the amount of people who will go "are you mental?!" in front of them are presumably (evidently) negligible.