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.