Coastal Credit Union Reviews

I saw another review before posting this one where tech support had the most convoluted workaround, deleting CoastalCreditUnion , deleting extra keyboard languages, changing the phones system language. That just feels like a few steps short of spinning around 3 times then chanting “make a payment” into a mirror with the lights off.

Saving your log in to use FaceID takes a some extra steps but that’s not an issue, trouble is it doesn’t work right. It will launch faceid multiple times while it’s logging in, “we’re sorry we were unable to validate your information” pops up after you’re logged in, kicks you back to the log in screen and when you try to log in again “if you switch usernames it’ll delete the old profile from this device blah blah blah”. If you manage to get far enough to make a payment on a loan, clicking submit payment just glitches out the screen, clears everything you’ve entered and doesn’t give any kind of indication a payment was submitted. You have to log in on another device to check payment history.

CoastalCreditUnion does the most basic of things. If you plan on checking your past transactions your out of luck. It will not show them. All you can do in each account is check the balance and last 10 transactions. However if I log in from the same iPhone through google I can see every transaction for at least the last year. This is a terrible banking app. Checking past transactions is a very basic function all banking apps should be able to accommodate. Coastals inability to provide this basic function leads me to have serious doubts about their ability to secure CoastalCreditUnion from bad actors. I have called about this issue and nothing no one has a remedy or answer. 2 year old iPhone

Whoever Coastal hired to make CoastalCreditUnion needs to be fired. That or the person making the decisions on how CoastalCreditUnion should run is stuck in the dark ages. CoastalCreditUnion is absolutely horrendous. The graphics and functionality is 10 years old and it still doesn’t have the update for FaceID. It’s mind blowing that a bank of this size can’t get it together. I legit have wanted to leave Coastal simply because of CoastalCreditUnion. My personal bank account will not be moving due to CoastalCreditUnion. Currently looking for a new bank for business account.

Edit. The update is still unbelievably slow and light years behind everyone else. The check deposit works 1 out of every 3 times. I have to close CoastalCreditUnion at least twice for it to work and the stupid recaptcha is one of those that you get wrong one time and locks you out. I waited this long and it didn’t deliver. Time to move to a new bank. ALSO. Be careful of these reviews. Some came out of nowhere and I’m not so sure they are real. Look how many 1-3 star reviews there are. How can this have 5 stars??

I was so excited to avoid going into town to deposit a check. I downloaded CoastalCreditUnion and all went smoothly until I wanted to deposit a check into my savings account. Where it says “tap on the account” you want; it will not scroll to the account. Which of course is impossible for me to deposit the check. I can only scroll through three accounts and that’s it! My savings account is impossible to reach! It’s hiding at the top of the screen under the menu bar. I have deleted and reloaded CoastalCreditUnion several times and nothing changes. You have got problems with CoastalCreditUnion. It’s time to do something about it.

One of the updates causes my facial recognition to give an error msg. I can successfully set it up but as soon as it invokes, I get an error msg. This does not happen with my other apps any I have the settings turned on within CoastalCreditUnion and in my iPhone settings. I called the 800 number that is listed in the error msg and they could not figure it out either. They said they had to create a ticket to IT because IT doesn’t speak directly to members. I hope I am contacted by IT because I have been working in an IT role for 25+ years and I currently lead an Application Production Support team at my own job so I have expectations of someone finding the defect that’s causing this because it’s not in my phone setup.

CoastalCreditUnion is incredibly slow. It takes over a quarter of a minute to launch and be ready on my iPhone 12 Pro Max with a WiFi 6 connection. Any other baking all I’ve used is ready in mere seconds. The Home Screen is basically useless, it’s marketing content instead of account information. When you finally get to data it looks like a web page. The mobile check deposit is missing the key feature of detecting the shape of the check and automatically taking a picture, something in all the other banking apps I’ve used. I suggest the authors take a good look at the very helpful Apple User Interface Guidelines for the next version. Also read up on Lazy Initialization to speed up launch.

Since this version replaced the prior app, Coastal has struggled to make it user-friendly. CoastalCreditUnion is incredibly slow, renders poorly, and is designed to fit on the phone screen…until the adverts load at the top of the screen, completely throwing off the layout. Several functions including adjusting scheduled transfers and bill pay features have never worked properly which forces you to log on via a laptop at times to complete basic functions. Most issues Coastal claimed would be fixed after roll out and still aren’t completely resolved after years.

Generally I think CoastalCreditUnion is great. Two comments: Most of the time when I log in, I am looking for account balance and activity. Would be nice to re-arrange Home Screen to have account summary as default with other icons below it. On a negative note it is, by far, the slowest loading app of all my banking/financial apps. It’s take 5-10 seconds for CoastalCreditUnion to load enough that I can begin clicking around. I’m not sure if it’s the adds that make it slow or the programming. I’ve had the apps for years and it’s always the same, on my iPad and iPhone. I’m now on the 14Pro.

I’m only here because I decided to delete then redownload CoastalCreditUnion so no it would hopefully work again. CoastalCreditUnion used to be great but now it’s buggy and frustrating to use. With all the updates in the operating system, you certainly need to update CoastalCreditUnion, more than once a year. Also, the UX of CoastalCreditUnion isn’t the greatest - for instance, too many cards on the home page… I don’t need both the menu and a card to direct me to my accounts. Allow me to eliminate one of those, especially if it allows CoastalCreditUnion to load faster. I too continue to get the double faceid and error saying I’m not validated or something, which is why I’m here today. I’m ready to diversify my banking solutions again.

CoastalCreditUnion and the website both are terrible. First, you are very limited in what you can do, and everything looks like it has organized by an interior designer and not anyone associated with finance. There are some technical features that seem nice for organization, but that’s the last thing I need as someone doing banking. The security is ridiculously good, which just gets in the way of doing what needs to get done. The history of transactions are limited and only show about 5 items at a time, and no way to scroll through more. I have used many banking and financial sites, and this has got to be the worst.

I've been asking my bank for years, if I can attach my phone number from Germany to my account. So I can receive messages, and for account verification. Each time, I'm told no. This forces me to use a family members number, because I do not have a U.S. telephone number. So, whenever I wish to do any banking online, my verification codes are sent to a number I do not have access to, and I am forced to call to get it. This is EXTREMELY inconvenient. I can also skip that part, and answer a slew of additional security questions. But, even with the security questions answered, I am sometimes denied access to my account. Today, people live all over the world, and I find Coastal to be lacking in terms of customer service by not letting customers associate their accounts to phone numbers of the country that they live in, outside the US.

Coastal made some improvements months ago but there are still a few items that need to be addressed.

Once CoastalCreditUnion is loaded on either my iPhone or iPad, if you hit Bill Pay, it takes a full 8 seconds for anything to happen. We’re left wondering if it’s going to work.

We have 2 accounts and when we pay a bill it asks if we want to have all bills paid from that account. The answer is no. What it should ask is if we want payments from this particular payee to be paid from a specific account each time. Currently it’s just an added 2 keystrokes that are pointless.

A small but aggravating item is it defaults each time in Bill Pay to All Accounts instead of remembering my last setting which would have been Current Accounts. What’s the point of having a more useful choice if you always have to reset it?

Lastly I gave up completely on using ebills. Way too many bugs. It’s was useless.

I like the new version of the Coastal app with a couple of exceptions. For reference, this has been my experience on an iPhone 11 & iPhone ProMax. Things I like: 1. Users now have the ability to stop a *single* reoccurring payment in Bill Pay. 2. I also really appreciate how very easy it is to deposit a check! Things that need work: 1. it is very slow to load (regardless of how much signal I have) 2. The facial rec feature often makes me log in twice and gives me an error message. (?) 3. The “Accounts” button on the drop down menu doesn’t take you to a list of accounts as I would have expected. Or to be precise, it takes you to two accounts. - To get where you can see a list of accounts, you have to choose the Home button on the drop down menu. Perhaps the current drop down Accounts button should be renamed?

The only reason I give it four stars is because I’d love for the bill pay function to be more robust on the mobile app. Also, the functionality of that system was actually made worse with the new system rollout. Users used to be able to set a particular account (joint checking, maybe your kid’s checking account, or another account set up for someone’s business) from which the money is withdrawn for EACH payee. Now, that functionality has been removed so each time you go to pay bill, you have to be careful and make sure you’re withdrawing the money from the correct account. This has burned us several times.

The mobile app is a really good convenience, especially for check deposits. The online bill pay is still clumsy and time consuming. The older application from years ago was much easier to use and track payments. I have to go into too many sections to find things. Too disconnected. The EUI (end user interface) may look organized but it takes me significantly more time to review and track payments. Hope you will start all over again with a better app. The much older application was not pretty but it got the job done much faster. After using the current app and its immediate predecessor for years, it still takes up a lot of my time and I make many more errors…like double payment of a bill, etc.

I have requested Coastal to be in Zelle network 3 years ago but I see no progress . Most transactions request Zelle now and all big Banks has Zelle to transfer money quickly, securely . I am thinking to open another bank account with the banks who has Zelle program for easy transfer the money to friends, vendors, etc. So, please join the Zelle’s network so I Don’t have to switch the bank although I really like Coastal and be loyalty for more than 20 years. Thanks!

I continue to be unable to login due to error messages stating that my device is rooted or jailbroken. I wasted several hours confirming that my device is not compromised, and was later told by support that they are aware of the issue but do not have a timeline to fix it. Mobile deposit is the only thing I cannot do from my online account, so for now I’m stuck going to the branch to deposit my checks. Please fix this!

I’ve been with Coastal for 20 years, and I was just about ready to move on because their app was just horrible. This update is a definite, huge step forward. It used to take forever to login, but with this new app, FaceID is finally here. It takes moments to login now. Unfortunately the inside still looks the same, but finally implementing FaceID is a big improvement. Looking forward to the next update.

In trying to deposit checks using the mobile app today, CoastalCreditUnion has spontaneously quit on me twice and has experienced significant lags during operations. I have used CoastalCreditUnion many times for these functions and have not had these problems before. I’m hoping this is just an off day and CoastalCreditUnion will go back to functioning smoothly from here on out.

While CoastalCreditUnion is very slow to load, it allows me to check my balances and deposit checks. It's what I expect from a banking app.
One caveat - if you use a VPN on your phone or your wifi, turn it OFF when you use CoastalCreditUnion or connect through your cell carrier. Coastal uses IP geoblocking, and if your IP address is outside the Triangle area CoastalCreditUnion *will not* load.