Starling’s iPad app has no more full functionality of the iPadOS than Monzo’s.
If Starling’s app was native, it would be very easy to take full advantage of iPadOS, with minimal code changes between the versions and would provide a much superior experience to the blown up iPhone app they give you. They wouldn’t need to update it independently to the iPhone app like they claimed they would have to if they were to support iPad properly.
Don’t have any analytics to hand right now, but my experience in the industry would err me on the side of yes, it is worth the effort. Optimising for iPad is not terribly difficult, and it’s another device folks can use the app on.
The apps work, granted, but no one likes using a tiny iPhone emulator or a blown up iPhone app.
Both banks are very lazy in this regard. And I don’t know why Starling gets a lot of praise for the few lines of code they added to make it work in full screen. They didn’t do that for the benefit of the user. They did it to cheat the App Store review process to get approved without having to do proper QC on older, smaller phones. They said as much in their own blog, if you read past the spin doctoring.
After careful consideration, we decided on running the app in full-screen. This will help us eliminate Apple review rejections and also improve the overall user experience for iPad customers.
Their system isn’t even designed to support multiple devices properly, so for most folks, it’s as pointless to use as Monzo’s is. Why did they opt out of macOS I wonder?