I was under the impression that the UK had a really old fashioned and clunky consumer bank sector. But that is just hearsay, so I might be wrong.
The closest I've every been to a British bank, was getting a Curve credit card, where they wanted a picture of me and my passport. Which imo. Was hilarious and must be way to easy to forge.
Yep, and this is standard operating procedure at pretty much every bank in the UK, and they wonder why they have to spend so much money on mitigating financial crime (not to mention employing people to review pictures of customers full time)...
1. To get an apartment you need a bank account 2. To have a bank account you need to identify yourself 3. How do you do that? Provide them with a GAS BILL for your apartment - which you don't have.
IIRC the deadlock in this case was solved by another friend loaning their bank account to bootstrap the system.
The face and passport thing is new and I'm not sure the traditional banks use it. There are some systems which ask for a video of you plus a photo of your passport (I think I used this for opening an account with Chase recently).
But there is a bit of a problem "bootstrapping" this, especially for recent immigrants who aren't registered to vote and don't have any credit records yet.
For example, to pay road tax for my car, the government send me a reminder letter in the post every year which has an 11 digit number on it. I can then log in to the DVLA website using this number and the car registration plate number (or alternatively I can do it using the serial number on the vehicle's "log book" and the registration number).
When I renewed my son's passport, the log in used (I think) the old passport number and his date of birth and name.
And so on. Each bit of government is only supposed to ask for what they need and no more.