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DIGITAL ID

What do you need to get a new Swedish digital ID card

Sweden's leading digital identity provider BankID has started issuing its new "digital ID card", which can be used to get post and buy alcohol but not to travel within Schengen or deal with Swedish government authorities. Here's how to get it.

Published: 21 June 2023 09:22 CEST
Updated: 26 June 2023 11:28 CEST
What do you need to get a new Swedish digital ID card
The digital ID card can be used to pick up parcels and a whole range of other tasks. Photo: BankID

The rise in mobile contact payments means more and more people in Sweden are leaving their wallets at home, only to find out they can’t pick up a parcel or buy alcohol because they don’t have their personal ID with them.

BankID, which is run by a company owned by Sweden’s seven biggest banks, has now gone some way to solving this problem with the launch of its new digital ID card.

The new digital card links your BankID and password with the photo, personal number and other info stored with your actual national identity card or passport, so that you can present a photo and QR code on your phone to prove your identity. 

What do you need to get the new digital ID card? 

You can create your new digital ID card in minutes, so long as you already have: 

  • An account with one of the seven banks which issue BankID
  • BankID 
  • A Swedish passport or national identity card (driving licences or foreign passports are not accepted) 
  • A phone capable of reading NFC chips

You can watch a video (in Swedish) on how to activate the card here. 

How do you create the digital ID card? 

Open up the BankID app on your phone and press the new “ID-kort” or “ID card” icon at the bottom of the screen.

Press “activate ID card”, and then accept the conditions.

Sign in to your BankID with your special number.

Choose whether you want to use your Swedish passport or your national ID card.

Photograph your ID card or the plastic page in your passport.

Lay your phone over your passport or ID card so the NFC reader on your phone can scan it.

How long does the ID last for? 

The ID card will remain on your phone until either your Mobile BankID or the ID document you used to create the digital ID card expires.  

How can you use the ID card? 

If you are picking up a parcel from PostNord or another parcel service, or buying alcohol at Systembolaget, you start up Mobile BankID on your phone, press the ID kort icon, sign into BankID, and then present the screen showing your picture, personal number and a QR code to the person you want to identify yourself to. 

Member comments

  1. It is not working with the Skatteverket issued ID card, which essentially means that this new digital ID system is only for Swedish citizens.

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TECH

‘It’s the cold weather’: How Sweden’s tiny gaming startups became world leaders

Minecraft, Valheim and Raft, just to name a few: Small or even one-man teams from Sweden have produced more video game hits than one would expect from a small country.

Published: 13 May 2024 09:30 CEST
'It's the cold weather': How Sweden's tiny gaming startups became world leaders

“It’s the cold weather – you sit inside, you game, you don’t really have anything to do outside,” Philip Westre, who co-founded the small game developer Landfall, mused when asked to explain the success of Sweden’s gaming industry.

Housed in a villa in a sleepy suburb west of Stockholm, the studio – which has around 10 employees – has just had a surprise hit of its own.

The walls of the small corner office are adorned with inspirational artwork from Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, framed covers of old games and a shelf with plush toys.

In line with their tradition of new releases on April 1st, they recently published their latest game: “Content Warning”.

The object of the goofy multiplayer romp is to film your friends being scared and upload the videos to the imagined social media platform SpookTube – hoping for them to go viral.

WORKING IN SWEDEN:

To help get the ball rolling, Landfall decided the game would be free for one day, but did not invest in any advertising.

To the company’s surprise, over six million people jumped at the offer in the first 24 hours.

Programmer Zorro Svärdendahl said one of the company’s goals was to beat their previous record for the number of people playing at the same time on gaming platform Steam.

Known as concurrent players, the metric is commonly used in the industry to assess a game’s popularity. Landfall’s previous record was 29,000.

“Day two, I think we reached 200,000 … which is pretty wild,” Svärdendahl told AFP.

Moving fast

Content Warning is only the latest example of small Swedish teams finding massive success.

In early 2021, the Viking-themed Valheim – created by a five-person team – was released by the studio Iron Gate and quickly found a global audience, going on to sell over 12 million copies.

Another breakout hit, Raft – where players are tasked with surviving aboard a raft floating in the ocean – was created by three students attending Uppsala University.

The most famous example is of course Minecraft, which was first developed by one person: Markus “Notch” Persson.

Since its original release on May 17th, 2009, Minecraft has become the best-selling video game in history, with the company Mojang announcing in 2023 it had surpassed 300 million units sold.

“I think that small teams can work and move really fast,” Svärdendahl said.

Decisions can be made by individuals based on what feels right, rather than having to negotiate approvals through multi-tiered corporate bureaucracy, he explained.

Svärdendahl believes the more nimble approach of a smaller team was key to the success of Content Warning, which was developed in a mere six weeks.

But some of Sweden’s game developers have grown into major studios with hundreds of employees, such as Dice – creators of the Battlefield series – and Massive Entertainment – currently developing the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws.

The Nordic country is also home to video game behemoth Embracer, which controls a slew of studios and owns the Tomb Raider franchise.

Despite having a population of just 10.5 million people, Swedish games have been downloaded seven billion times, according to the Swedish Games Industry, which estimates that every fourth person in the world has played a game made in Sweden.

In 2022, the country’s game developers had a combined revenue of 32.5 billion kronor ($3 billion).

Per Strömbäck, president of the Swedish Games Industry, said several factors explained the country’s gaming success.

It has a number of quality schools training a competent workforce, as well as a culture conducive to teamwork.

‘Self-fulfilling prophecy’

In addition, Sweden’s small size meant developers sought out an international audience early on.

“We now also have several decades of tradition in the industry,” Strömbäck told AFP.

The first seeds of the Swedish scene can be found in the “nerd culture” of the 1980s, he said.

The pioneers learned programming on Commodore 64 computers, while they picked up game mechanics from role-play games.

“Nobody then realised that it would become a billion-dollar industry,” Strömbäck said.

At Landfall, Westre pointed out that Swedes are also big gamers themselves.

“Gaming culture is very, very strong here, both on gaming and development,” he said.

Svärdendahl added that the culture had begun to feed itself, with younger developers inspired by their predecessors.

As “a really big Minecraft fan”, he himself was psyched when he learned the game had been developed in his home country.

“It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because I knew people made games in Sweden, I knew I could make games in Sweden.”

Article by AFP’s Johannes Ledel

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