Comment by cess11
2 days ago
BankID is not a government thing, it's developed by a company founded by a bank consortium. Once upon a time the state aimed to build an public good in this space but bank representatives in the committee responsible managed to block it.
I was under the impression that it doesn't work under GrapheneOS, great news that it does. Other than that it shares some of the characteristics detailed above, refusing to run if it notices rooting and the like. Also no Linux support.
Edit: I agree that it has a convenience to it, but I strongly suspect it has a latent tyrannical potential and that future governments will exploit this to a further degree.
The banks did not block it. The Swedish state did not want to spend 50-100 kr per citizen to distribute the secure element. They instead opted for aligning with the one set of institutions that already had somewhat good customer knowledge and could bear the cost, the banks. The incumbent telco (Telia) also tried but their system was even worse than bank id.
BankID also doesn't have Windows support. There's a defunct app that used smart-cards but it's fully deprecated and does not function.
But yes, it's owned by the banks not the state; if anything though this increases its weakness.
You can use BankID to identify with the tax agency, the public health services and police. (and more: this is just what I'm aware of) and there's an expectation that you have a BankID.
Also to identify with the banks, which was the original purpose, and many other services. It's somewhat expensive to run an integration but many customers and other users have a feeling that it is especially trustworthy as a method of authentication. One use I've had is with a file storage platform, they have an integration so that one can create shares against 'personal number' through BankID, which our customers in the public sector really liked. No need for them to juggle some account, they just share a 'personal number' and we were good to go.
The main competitor is Freja+, or just Freja, or Freja eID. It's particularly popular among immigrants, as I understand it, though not as commonly supported, especially in the private sector. There is also a semi-public electronic ID, "Skatteverkets ID-kort", issued by the same company that produces swedish passports, which is owned by the french defense corporation Thales.