[lbschenkel]

I definitely agree. The system could certainly be improved.

My gripe with BankID is that it's a monopoly and it's tied to having a bank account. It's easy to fall into the cracks. For example, I know first hand more than one foreigner that moved to Sweden and couldn't do basically anything online because they didn't have BankID and couldn't get one because they needed to visit a bank branch and have an appointment, and they couldn't get one without having to wait for 2 months or more (partly due to COVID-19).

The system could be much better if there were many accredited providers of digital ID (this is somewhat already the case, there's Freja now) and there was a mandated standard protocol that the accredited providers implement, so you could have the ID from any provider and that ID would work on any site. The latter is not the case to the best of my knowledge: although many government websites are supporting Freja, most private ones like Kivra or Klarna and of course the banks only support BankID. This is not great.

It also forces you to have an Android or iPhone, and basically have a relationship with these foreign tech giants and accept their policies in order to be a "digital citizen" in your own country. If they ban your account for any reason, and you lose access to the store without any recourse, and you can't install the app, you are basically SOL. This is a trickier problem to solve, and it's not exclusive to BankID by any means, but if there was competition it would be more likely (at least on paper) that somebody might provide an alternative.

My take is that indeed: the system mostly works, it is convenient, but it's not perfect by any means. There's plenty of room for improvement. Just having real competition instead of a de facto monopoly would fix most issues.

[dmitri_ravinoff]

> It also forces you to have an Android or iPhone, and basically have a relationship with these foreign tech giants and accept their policies in order to be a "digital citizen" in your own country. If they ban your account for any reason, and you lose access to the store without any recourse, and you can't install the app, you are basically SOL.

For me this is mind-boggling. Could you please elaborate or link to a resource on that? Do the respective apps work on rooted phones? Regarding the Bank ID: I worked as an intern in Sweden in the 2002 and this sucked already then. As a foreigner you got an ID that somehow "almost" matched the normal way the number was generated (an offset on the YOB if I remember correctly). It was always an interesting experience to find out if an office/application supported such foreigner ID or not. Hopefully this got fixed in the meantime. After all my yearly letter from pensionsmyndigheten is at least partially translated in multiple languages. Good for me as I lost almost all my Swedish.

[lbschenkel]

Maybe you got a "coordination number" instead of a "person number"? You only get the latter if you are expected to live in the country for longer than a year. The former "confuses" a lot of people and websites, which are not fully prepared to deal with it.

> Could you please elaborate or link to a resource on that?

Not sure what exactly you're looking for. There are 3 types of BankID: "on file", "on card" and "mobile". The first two are seldomly used and not all banks offer it (mine doesn't). I believe that most sites only support the mobile version. The mobile app cannot be sideloaded on iOS, and requires Google Play Services on Android. (For now it works on rooted phones. For now.)

Although technically minded people can still find a way to sideload the Android app without having to have a Google account, this is far from being mainstream. For most people you have to agree with Apple or Google's terms and have an account with them. If you're banned and lose access to the store, you can't install BankID any longer. It's not fun to live in Sweden and not have access to BankID.

I don't like the idea that you have to establish an asymmetrical relationship with a foreign conglomerate to be able to identify yourself in your own country and use digital services.

I think that having competition at least opens up the possibility that one of the players will introduce a mechanism that does not rely (solely) on Apple/Google technology. For example, a simple hardware token could work.

Regarding IDs for foreigners, I believe that the EU cracked down on Sweden and at least the government websites allow other European digital IDs nowadays. At least the option shows up in the list of authentication choices, but since I can't use that flow I cannot state how well it works in practice.

[dmitri_ravinoff]

Tack så mycket! Your detailed explanation cleared things up.

>I don't like the idea that you have to establish an asymmetrical relationship with a foreign conglomerate to be able to identify yourself in your own country and use digital services.

The general acceptance of this in Swedish society boggles my mind. But hey, I am not a Swedish citizen, so it's not my job to tell people what to do.