I’d say there’s more to it than just convenience though. It’s not just bureaucracy but literally everything makes use of BankID. If I need to log on to my landlord’s portal to report a problem or check some info, I need to use BankID to access it. Of course I can report the problem elsewhere, and obtain that info by calling or mailing them, but it’s not the default. Everything here is defaulting to a digital way of doing it.

Say I need to pick up a parcel at the local post office. I just open the app, verify with BankID, scan a QR code, and wait for the robot to fetch my parcel. I’m in and out in the span of 30 seconds or so. If someone without a way of identifying themselves digitally need to pick up a parcel, they’ll need to get in the queue, give the clerk the shipment ID (usually just the 4 last digits), show the clerk identification, just for them to print a QR label to scan at the robot. Our local post office, like most post offices nowadays really, is inside a grocery store. In the case of this particular one it’s a separate checkout, shared with gambling and the café, it’s not busy all the time so it might not take much longer, but sometimes you have to wait 10-15 minutes because of people buying baked goods, hotdogs, and scratch cards. In lots of other stores the post shares a queue with the regular grocery checkout, so even if you’re just after a parcel you’ll have to line up with people there for their regular groceries.

When I visited the U.S. back in 2019, one of the things I noticed was how everything was very much designed with the idea that you’d be in a car, pretty much all the time. Sure things were walkable, but everything was spaced great distances apart, and everything had massive parking lots. It was very obvious that cars were the default mode of transport, even if you were just going to the nearby grocery store.

That’s what being a non-digital-denizen is like here. You can get things done, but it’ll take lots more time, and you’ll often have to explain why you can’t do something the “normal” way, because here the digital way very much is the default way.

There are other services apart from BankID, like Freja e-ID, and I think one or two more, but not all services support them. Exceedingly few do, I’d say. BankID kind of has a monopoly by virtue of being the first out the door with it back in 2003. I personally think the government should take control over BankID, because it’s become such an integral part to our societal infrastructure that it makes no sense for private entities to have full control over it.

It’s not a convenience thing, it’s because the government fucked up the whole online thing. They started too late, they constantly miss the goals they set themselves, nobody seems to want to push things forward. It’s a bit frustrating. On the other hand, yeah privacy. If you ignore that the Finanzamt can check your bank account whenever they want without you being notified about it (yes, they need a reason, still…) and Krankenkassen knowing almost everything about your health because they get the bills from your doctor.