chase wants me to update safari to 16, should i do that?

If your tagline is correct, macOS 10.15 is a long ways back, and Safari under that version is woefully out of date. There have been a lot of security updates since then.

Problem is, the only way to get a recent version of Safari is to have a release of macOS that isn't more than three versions old. With Sonoma, Catalina is now 5 versions back.

If your Mac is too old to upgrade to a newer OS, you should use a browser that is kept up to date for such older versions of macOS. Such as Firefox or Brave. Avoid Chrome like the plague.

At one point, Apple froze the User Agent string to a Safari version of 15.x. I never looked at Ventura, but it does send the correct version in Sonoma.

If you look at About Safari, what version does it show? It's possible you can be running a newer version of Safari, but it is telling Chase it is version 15.

Building on the previous very good advise 😎

Browsers by Mac operating system - Apple Community

kcw15 wrote:

if i can't upgrade my mac, should i look into getting a new one?

If you can't do what you need to do because of the age of the computer and its capabilities then yes you should get a new one.

But first I would try a different browser like FireFox or Edge.

Explore the Apple Trade-In  Process where the Value of the exiting device could be used against the cost of a new Apple Computer, iPhone or iPad 

Notation - Some devices and depending on the computers age may have little to no value at Trade In time.

But at least the device will not arrive to the Land Fill Site and be recycled in a responsible way by Apple

Or Shop Refurbished Apple computers at an Apple Reduced Cost

Have used both previously and have been satisfied each time.

The W3C is working on User-Agent Client Hints to replace what are now nearly frozen UA header content. This explains why Apple has frozen its UA content at Catalina 10_15_7. I think that financial institutions that base their security criteria on the current UA header string will be prematurely blocking browsers until they adopt these new W3C approach to identifying the correct browser and associated data content.

If your current Mac does everything else you need it to do, then there's no pressing need to get a new computer. Just use a more up-to-date third party browser to satisfy your bank's security needs.

Here is what I am seeing in Safari 17.0 in Sonoma 14.0 on my M2 Mac Mini Pro:

VikingOSX wrote:

Here is what I am seeing in Safari 17.0 in Sonoma 14.0 on my M2 Mac Mini

Maybe it was always only the OS version , not Safari version.