Episode: 2853
Title: HPR2853: Feeding the beast
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2853/hpr2853.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:11:03

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This in HPR episode 2008-153 titled Feeding the Beast, it is hosted by Focus and in about
seven minutes long and Karimaklin flag, the submarine, how the Swedes are killing their
hard cush and feeding the beast.
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Hi, this is Foki. It's been a long time since I've contributed something but now it's
summer, the time when HPR usually has a hard time filling all slots and I think I have
something to fill in one.
This time it won't be about podcasts, it's about how the Swedes, meaning people living
in Sweden, are killing their hard cush and that way feeding the beast.
It's like an undergoing study how you, by giving convenience, can trap a whole community.
And by the way, I'm part of this experiment, I don't look at it from the outside, I use
what I will be describing but I'm doing it with a bad gut feeling.
To give you the whole picture, I have to begin with something that is in itself not about
cash.
In earlier times when you had contacts to the administration of the state, the province
or country, county you're living in, you had to fill forms and sign those by your hand,
writing on the bottom of the form.
Nowadays let's become a seldom occasion because you can get this online.
It's still forms but now it's on screens.
Not how can you assure your personal identity when no one is seeing your ID card or passport
and you don't write by hand.
In Sweden you often are using something called bank ID.
As the name is hinting, it's your bank that's assuring your identity.
But to be accurate, it's not even your bank, it's outsourced to a company.
The bank is only assuring to the company that you are, you and from there, it's stressed
this company that is doing the job.
In the beginning, a bank ID was a file on your desktop or laptop computer that got
to be examined by a proprietary browser plugin.
A solution only working for Windows or Mac users.
For quite some time we had a free plugin to working of course on the GNU Linux.
Maybe engineering of the proprietary we want but this is gone.
They changed the specs of the file and the friendly programmer of the free plugin gave up.
I contacted all administration units using bank ID pointing to the problem that you have
to use a proprietary system on your computer to use the public services.
They didn't or didn't want to understand what I was writing about and instead gave
me the advice to use the mobile bank ID, mobile bank ID.
And that's just the way it mostly is used today.
You have an app on your phone called justbank ID that's been used every time.
You have to assure that you are you and that you want to take the action you just took.
You are using it when logging into your bank account, declare your taxes, propose for
your parental leave, change your address, register in your car.
For all of these cases you have either an app on your phone or a web page mostly both.
But now back to the money.
It's not new that you don't have to give hard cash to pay for something.
We had a long time transfers and I heard in the US you mostly use credit cards to pay
but that's still not convenient enough in many cases.
What are you doing when you will give some money to another private person but don't
have enough bank notes or coins with you or how do you assure that you always get all
numbers right while doing bank transfers?
The Swedish solution is called swish.
It is an application on your phone.
It's bound to your phone and phone number.
In the first start you are assuring your phone's identity with a bank via surprise bank
ID.
From now on you only need the phone number of the other swish user to pay him or her.
The same way you get money from someone other.
Companies and organizations can get own numbers, others and phone numbers right now detected
by 1, 2, 3 at the beginning of the number.
The advantage you can show directly to the receiver that the transaction is realized
and before you affirm the transaction with your bank ID you get to see the name of the
receiver in the display.
The first disadvantage is the other side is seeing your identity too in the list of received
payments.
So even when you are only buying some fine book on the flea market you are paying not only
with money but also with your identity.
In most cases I don't think that's a big problem.
90% of my private swish contacts do know me anyway but it doesn't stop there.
More and more companies and organizations are using swish too.
Something that is a little weird for me because users of 1 to 3 numbers are paying to the
company behind swish for every transaction.
If my information is right it's 1% of the amount.
One last thing that's becoming more and more used is something called blip.
For amounts up to 200 crowners you can pay by just holding your debit card to the payment
terminal and the turns action is done without any identity assurance, no pin, no signature.
To sum it up we are using private company solutions to transfer money and for our contacts
to the public administration.
Every time we have problems with net connectivity or the companies behind bank days swish and
blip have hiccups everyone is having problems.
Many people don't even have cash in their purses or little or so little that they could
not even buy the needs of the day.
As I already said I'm not better than my surrounding.
I too use swish to quick give my share of a gift to a colleague.
I too are signing my form for parental leave with banking day and I'm bleeping for the
ice cream this summer.
In every dream life that's convenient but every time I give a little bit more to the
big data collection and every time I'm helping one step more towards the cash free society
making it hard for those not part of it because they don't have an account in the banks
behind bank ID or because they only visit Sweden for a while and would prefer to use
hard cash.
One last information, it's not only Sweden working on this path, for Nordic neighbours
Denmark, Norway and Finland have or are introducing similar solutions.
Just take a tour and Copenhagen and you will see.
Thank you for your time.
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