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Comment by throwaway473825 | Hacker News Reader

>have no fees

Both Swish and BankID have fees. After all, they're run by for-profit corporations.

Those apps also reduce competition in the banking sector since they're controlled by a few banks which generally have very high fees on their other services.

What's even worse, since BankID is private, there's no individual right to get it, and I've personally experienced banks abusing their oligopoly (buy this extra service or you won't get BankID from us).

The Swedish situation is a nightmare which nobody should try to emulate. Fortunately, the Swedish government has finally announced plans to introduce a public government eID, although 20 years too late.

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I have never heard a single person complaining about BankID really. The only downside is the huge risks, especially for older people. We basically took control of an elderly family members bankid to avoid them being scammed.

This is something they really need to work on, just add an optional extra layer or cool-down, to slow everything down. You dont necessarily HAVE to have your transactions be immediate, waiting a few days would have been fine in our cases.

> I have never heard a single person complaining about BankID really.

You haven't met any foreign people then, BankID is a common complaint among international students. I've moved to Sweden recently for university and getting BankID was/is a nightmare. It requires you go get a bank account (which I don't want nor need, and has yearly fees), and since the ID card we get from Skatteverket does not have NFC, we need to go to the bank to setup it on a new phone every time (at least on SEB). And getting a bank account is not a simple process either, it took me like 3 months doing paperwork (and had to mail it physically, they don't do in-person appoitments for this), and I'm an EU citizen. Obviously for Swish you'd need a Swedish bank account, but my point is that you should be able to get a digital eID from the government without any other requirements (like I got my physical ID card from Skatteverket).

> What's even worse, since BankID is private, there's no individual right to get it

Nothing stops people from making it a right.

Brazilians have that right. Everyone can get a free checking account with transfers and Pix at every bank. They still try to sell us "service packages" but the idea of paying a fractional reserve bank any amount of money is just stupid if not abusive. They should be paying us for the privilege of having our money deposited into their reserves, not the other way around.

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