I live in an EU country and I, in fact, cannot use online banking without a Google-enabled Android or an iPhone. There is exactly one bank that offers a desktop authenticator, but we had a really bad experience with them when we tried them for a year.
The hardware dongle sounds like it might be TOTP. There are plenty of clients for that for laptops and phones, assuming you can enroll your own secret.
and it's not going to improve. second factor auth in Europe now legally means "second factor auth via means the gov can positively link your Identity".
for anything EU or eu commission, you must either have an app in stock OS smartphone, or receive a sms on a network they can validate sim is attached to a tax id, or nothing else is allowed. totp et al is legally verboten.
I might be lucky enough to have online banking work with sms and a pre-shared secret. My bank (also in the EU) didn't tell me I could do it automatically, they only mentioned it when I told them I lost my phone (it was true) and that I didn't know when I could buy a new one. Maybe it'll work with yours ?
No, ever since PSD2 came into effect, banks here refuse to do SMS-based verification and have switched to apps. They also don't support hardware authenticators for consumers. I asked.
Netherlands today is more like the USA. anything it can fight the EU it will. it's the reason it's the new silicon valley with all tax dodging companies moving there.
