KEB-Hana Bank merger and Chrome's NPAPI plugins

Like many other expats, I'm awaiting the revamping of the merged KEB-Hana bank online banking website. 




They've had limited functionality for about a month now as the system merger was in-progress. A bit annoying, really. I hope they come up with a better solution for non-Windows users after all this. In fact, they'll have to. I'm hopeful that this merger and the associated hassle it's caused the bank will be the "emergency" they need to light a fire under their asses.

In April 2015 NPAPI support will be disabled by default in Chrome [as indeed, happened] and we will unpublish extensions requiring NPAPI plugins from the Chrome Web Store. Although plugin vendors are working hard to move to alternate technologies [are they? This is Korea, after all...], a small number of users [all KEB customers using Chrome] still rely on plugins that haven’t completed the transition yet. We will provide an override for advanced users (via chrome://flags/#enable-npapi) and enterprises (via Enterprise Policy) to temporarily re-enable NPAPI while they wait for mission-critical plugins to make the transition.
In September 2015 we will remove the override and NPAPI support will be permanently removed from Chrome. Installed extensions that require NPAPI plugins will no longer be able to load those plugins. [Google Chromium Blog]

To minimize customers' inconveniency, KEB plans to take emergency measures before the termination of NPAPI. [KEB Google Chrome Notice]

It's a little comical then that the termination of the NPAPI standard coincidentally coincides with the KEB-Hana merger. The merged online banking site is supposed to be launched in just a few days now. Let's hope they've taken the opportunity to come up with a more reliable, simple means of doing online banking with Chrome. I won't hold my breath, but it will be interesting to see what they've come up with. Until then, best to stick with the phone apps.

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