Citi Mobile®
reviews and complaints

I have loads of money on my checking account, so I can repay my credit card beyond full at any time, and therefore must NOT be charged interest.

I usually pay my credit card bills a few days before the due date with an extra amount compared to my current statement or whatever (yeah, whatever is the highest) in order to be able to forget this card for a few days while avoiding to pay any kind of interest. I can do that with no trouble at all for all my credit cards except...
No! Not with Citibank! Every time I try to get cozy with my Costco credit card for a few days, I get reminded (by the app itself!) that this is a device for usury slaves; I will never be able to pay more than my highest due amount x 1.075, putting Citi in the perfect position to charge me absolutely unwarranted interest unless I keep watch on this card like on boiling milk, because I continually use this card for purchases (this is what it was made for, after all, wasn’t it? Or was it designed as a tool to control an army of usury slaves and the microchip meant to be implanted on our brains? Too bad you still don’t have the technology, or you would surely do this already Citibank, wouldn’t you? Let’s see in the future: Elon Musk and Neuralink are already working on this).

In this country, we usually say that only the rich get loans and/or credit, and that the poor be riddled with bad debt and the interests that come with it (a credit card debt with 15.24% of Variable Purchase APR for example, anyone?), but apparently, at Citibank, this adage was flipped and even those who are well-off have to submit to Citibank’s desire not to carry too much liability on all of their credit card contracts (it would be embarrassing to owe money to someone, individually speaking, you are giving credit to, hum, Citibank?).
It is kind of a reverse Robin Hood scheme, when you think about it; Citibank, like him, also steal from the rich, but not to give it to the poor, no, no, no: just to make themselves richer.

Also, I won’t miss the occasion to mention to everyone here that when I tried to use my desktop computer to log into my online Citibank Costco credit card account with the correct password (to check the Variable Purchase APR), their system failed to deliver the one-time passcode, whether I requested it by text message or by a phone call.

If they continue like this, they will lose one slave in their army of usury victims. I know it would not affect their bottom line, but it would satisfy my personal principles.

Thank you very much for having read it all.
To conclude, this is a capitalist dumpster fire.

Just got X and I find Citi Mobile has a critical backdoor flaw.

The problem is that this facial ID can be hacked. Not by the “twin face” or other elaborate workarounds, but through the passcode. Once the facial ID is hacked, Citibank can be unlocked in a jiffy.

For whatever reason, the iOS11 allows the fingerprint settings and now facial recognition settings to be overridden by the passcode. To turn off the “Find My Phone” the iOS requires the Apple ID password—but for the even more significant facial recognition it merely requires the passcode to issue a ID reset. Apple then is scrupulously strict with the “Find My Phone” but cavalier and inconsistent with regards to the unique phone identification finger print/facial recognition.

To see why this is a big, big problem, think about how we all commonly share our passcode with close family and friends.
The iOS11 presumes only one user with "unique" identification through fingerprint and now facial recognition.

If these authentication methods fail, it allows for a passcode to gain access. In reality, our phones are shared and used by many users particularly within family and amongst friends. A spouse or child often needs access to a partner/parent's phone. We may leave a phone at a friend’s house and ask them to get into the phone to retrieve some data that we need: we give them the passcode for quick access.

Because the iOS does not techically allow for multiple users to use a single device simultaneously, a shared passcode serves as workaround. I was just talking with an Apple technical support person and he admitted that he had access to his girlfriend’s phone and she his. It is just a fact of life.

At houses there are now physical locks with numeric codes to provide access. These far less sophisticated locks allow for limited use codes to provide access to handymen or neighbors to walk the dog when we are away. People need access but we don’t want to provide continual unlimited house access—thus the temporary code.

We share passcodes thinking that we are providing limited access just as we are providing limited access to our house. But iOS allows users once “in” to completely reset the phone. With the passcode the fingerprint/facial ID can be reset, and from there unlimited access to all the apps that run off the “unique” ID. Citi mobile runs off of facial recognition.

Apple will say that the passcode is unique and should be kept private, but in reality all of us need to provide access to family/friends and the vast majority of us are sharing this passcode. We are treating it as limited access but in reality the iOS dangerously allows for this access to be much more.
Apple should of course create a limited access code just as we have for our home locks. But until that day, it should at least treat the fingerprint/facial ID as strictly as it does “Find My Phone.”

At a minimum it should require the Apple ID password for changing fingerprints. At present I cannot recommend Citi Mobile because of this weakness.

I had to readdress this crappy app. You'll notice the flurry of 5 star reviews given yesterday. Looks like Citibank isn't going to pull the app and roll it back to the last one, instead it seems they have their people writing great reviews like "wonderful shading." who gives a crap about shading on a banking app's web front-end? It's a B A N K I N G app. If I can no longer choose to make a payment of my choosing (only minimum or full balance), can no longer see info about a transaction (now I only see the generic term "debit purchase"), etc., why even bother with a mobile app? I can't believe an executive or at least a manager at Citi's mobile development group hasn't seen the response this joke of an update is receiving. Guess they could care less about their customers. Chase is looking pretty good to me as a bank, and as a mobile service provider. At least they have a CLUE about technology.

I have over 600 apps in my library and 210 installed on my iPhone. This is by far the worst update of an app EVER. Who's in charge of mobile app development at Citi?!? How could they not see that this is a tremendous step backwards from the previous version? Were there no beta testers? Focus groups? Marketing research?

I sincerely hope that the mobile development team is keeping up with these one star reviews. In fact, one star is very generous, since I'm sure many reviewers would have given this update a zero star rating if possible. Listen to your customers Citibank - roll back the update to the previous version, apologize for screwing up the update by replacing what was an unexciting but very useable app with an EPIC FAIL, and try again. Try looking at the competition... Chase has an INCREDIBLE app with amazing functionality. Bank of America has an extremely well made app, etc.

Don't get too cocky about those three, four, and five star ratings some people gave this update. You'll notice that they never mention the app as an update, so they probably just discovered this app and have no idea what they are missing by never having used the previous version. To them, this is just a miniature web portal to Citi. A web app compared to what we were using is simply pathetic.

For those who like the old version better, hopefully when you updated you didn't empty your trash. Simply delete the new app (Citibank 3.0) from your iOS device and from your iTunes library. Take the old version (Citibank 2.0.3) out of the trash and drag it into your library and then sync. You'll have the old version back on your device. The down side to this is that you now have to update each app manually, since if you select "Update All," the Citibank app will update to the terrible 3.0 version again.

Citibank -- do the right thing -- pull this lame update from the App Store, and roll back to the previous version! And try giving us a useful update with retina graphics and a universal app so we can use it on the iPad. Photo depositing checks like Chase would be awesome, but I won't hold my breath. I've already seen that mobile development at Citibank is the opposite of innovative.

To preface, the nation is currently (still) trying to function in the midst of the COVID-19 mess, and I’m not aware of how Citi is handling the workload, but even so, the little “quirks” about this app and the website has, under these circumstances, turned a small issue into quite an unnecessary monster.
I have been a customer with Citi for several years now. Having a smartphone and computer, I have also used the app and website for a long time. I usually login to my account via the app’s (now removed) fingerprint option.
Earlier this week, I opened the app to check my balance. Usually, the fingerprint login option pops up and I’m able to login in seconds. This time (unaware that the option had been removed), the popup never showed on my screen. So I decided to login manually.
Big mistake. I have various passwords and hadn’t logged into the app via password in quite some time. So I maxed the login attempts and was blocked.
Fine. I can just reset the password and regain access. I input all the necessary information to reset when I’m told that my information does not match the records. I have tried multiple times not to reset and every time it tells me the same thing.
I know I have the correct information on my end. I have all the documents in front of me and can’t have inputted it incorrectly all the times I have tried to reset. I have also tried to reset on both my phone and computer. Same result.
At this point I’m mildly annoyed. I then try to contact customer service via Live Chat only to be told I need to login to do so. Geez, I wonder why anyone not logged in would need to contact customer service. I wonder...
So I go ahead and do the last thing I want to do: contact customer service on the phone. I prefer online chats and emails (another thing, why in God’s name does Citi not have a general customer service email? absurd) because customer service over the phone is just not as seamless. In fact, my experience was the opposite of seamless. I have tried to contact customer service over the phone 4 times now and was never able to speak with a representative. Ironically I didn’t have any issue accessing information my account over the phone (they only asked the last 4 of my debit card, and when wanting to speak to a representative, they ask for the PIN, all of which were correct and I was allowed to move forward).
No, the issue was being on hold to speak to a representative. The first time I was on hold for 10 minutes shy of 2 hours and then the “call failed”. The second time I was on hold for almost an hour when the “call failed”. The third time I was on hold for more than 30 minutes when I hung up in frustration. This last time, today, I was on hold less than 10 minutes before the “call failed”.
There is nothing wrong with my service. I have completed several calls this week to other numbers with no issue. I am suspecting that the call volume is so large for representatives that they are hanging up on some of them to deal. However, I have no proof of this, which is why I said “suspect”.
As you can imagine, this is the tipping point for me. The last thing I would be able to do is send mail as a point of contact. I’m hesitant to do so because physical mail is even less trustworthy than customer service over the phone. It could be weeks or even months before I hear anything back. All because of an account block.
So I am on here after already submitting feedback on the site, where after I clicked submit I was not asked for an email in case of follow-up (nice).
I will probably not get that here as well, but since this is more public I’m hoping someone, anyone, will reach out and try to help me with this issue, because I’m at my wit’s end.

So, instead of just using your username and password as would be the easy, logical thing, you're forced to get a "phone banking" code. I actually managed to do this by calling the number listed (I guess I was lucky to get that far), except that the phone banking codes created by the automated system are SHORTER than the codes that this app accepts. So, after getting your code, you then have to call up again, skip the voice system, and get to talk to a person to get them to change your code to the longer format (oh, and as I discovered, you can't just use a human in the first place and have them create your code. You first have to use the automated system to create a short code, then call again to get a person to change it to the long code). When I actually got to talk to a person, I was told that I would have to wait at least 24 hours for my other code to register before I could change it. I probably should have given up at this point, but I duly called back the next day, and was finally able to get a long code. Yay! I entered the code, and I was actually able to log into the application. Once.

That's right, the code worked the very first time I used it, then never again, all subsequent logins claim that it is invalid. This is the point where I gave up and deleted the app. It actually looked like it might have been a decent app the one time I was able to use it, but since Citibank insists on using their archaic and thoroughly broken Phone Banking system as the sole means of accessing it, I'll never know.

Just stick to using the Citibank mobile web site. It's actually halfway decent, and unlike this app, lets you login using your normal web username and password.