As a former banker and also been in a case where we investigated the hack, it traced all the way to China. We reported it to the authorities but it was deemed NFA as it was out of the jurisdiction of our authorities. Recently as well, a number of them originates from Myanmar which is also out of the jurisdiction.

I have seen cases where many people who fall scam was due to not really their own fault but by their own family members who took their money away. Other times as well, if it was a business account, it was another authorizer and partner who take the money and ran away. What you see reported on the news is only probably 20% of the real story.

Which bank are you referring to? For local banks, the big 5 banks developed the app in-house by staff. Yes, they do get vendors to help with certain integration or get help by external vendors to help them on the UI/UX and customer journey, at the end of the day, the bank still owns the code, in-house team supports that code base and maintain the platform. Not too sure which cronies you are referring to.

MySejahtera is MySejahtera as they used a local vendor and company (the app is registered under a separate Sdn Bhd). This case is because the government doesn't have a tech arm or a group of developers working under them (unlike Singapore which has the arm called GovTech), so they need to rely on third party vendors to manage their software and builds.

Secure2U is owned by Maybank. Each bank have their own version of an MFA authorisation token. Even international banks. Yes, they do use white labelled software vendors for the product for some banks and some banks built it up from scratch. Banks have their own in-house tech team to build, manage and support the software. They are public listed companies and have to report to Bank Negara for all vendor management which is in accordance to the RMIT guidelines (Risk Management) and also to adhere to procurement policies such as following the Corporate Liability provision under section 17A of the MACC Act 2009 (rolled out on 1 June 2020).

Once you start going through all of the banking apps, it all feels the same to be honest including those from overseas. A lot of the UIUX are inspired by the competition and a lot of decisions are done (choosing which UX path) is to get one that users are already familiar with. Much like when you design for Apple devices, you want to keep the UX path and flow as close to how Apple does as compared to trying to do something completely different and make it more complex (leads to loads of customer complaints).

Do you use DBS Mobile banking app? The UX that MAE and Octo uses are quite similar with that together with Revolut and other digital banks.

The thought process of the flow is this normally if you consider the mobile app landing, you would split up the screen into 3 sections. The top section is what is you want the user to see the most (some banks put the balance, some put important messaging and some put the latest offers there). It is the section in which most users will glance over.

The middle section is usually aligned with either shortcuts, most recent actions or quick action items. Most banks would put in last transaction items (like make a transfer to that same payee), or pay a certain bill. This section is usually designed to be dynamic as it would cater to each user's action or preference on the mobile banking app. Usually how they would design this is to allow the user to swipe left or right. Why this section? Because that is where the fingers are normally at when a user is holding the phone and with the emergence of large phones, even the thumb can reach the center but not the top.

The bottom section is where you would allow for it to be an up and down scroll motion. So that means you can put in a lot of information here, from past transactions, to new offers and marketing materials or other products (e.g. FD, Insurance and others).

What my point I want to say that as banks use vendors or companies to help them design the UIUX, some of them follow the same school of thought and some will try to make themselves different and yes, sometimes designs do overlap with each other as they use a whitelabel product from another vendor as well (e.g. KipplePay whitelabels their eWallet to other ewallet players).