Given the recent news about Google’s hardening of sideloaded apps, I need to speed up my efforts to get rid of Google services.

However, there are a few apps/infrastructures that I’m really struggling to find a replacement for, because I happen to be in a long distance relationship with my girlfriend and I often travel to South-East Asia.

Banking

Maybe the easier part is the banking: currently I use ING, Revolut and Wise.

• ING is my main account that I trust. Employers in Germany sometimes require a German bank account, it’s not enough to simply have a German IBAN. For this, I’ve been thinking of N26. It seems like they have a full-featured web interface, so the app is probably not mandatory. Does anyone have any experience with them?
• Revolut’s web interface is not complete, so I cannot use it in the future.
• Wise does have a full-featured web interface, but I still need to experiment whether I can actually transfer money to Asian bank accounts.

“Asian infrastructure”

Now this is the real headache. In South-East Asian countries, people only know WhatsApp. It’s considered as a must-have. If anyone wants to contact you, it’s either WhatsApp or it’s not happening. And the other thing is Grab for an Uber-like service plus for food delivery, as well as groceries. Since in many of these countries it’s simply not an option to walk, this is an important app. I’d be interested in some insights from locals, how do they manage to live there without Grab and WhatsApp.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: typo