Newly updated BankID - an absolutely brilliant app and critical for living in Scandinavia - has introduced a digital ID card (again, an ID card is an important part of living in Scandinavia). However on trying to install the digital ID card on BankID I stumbled at the last hurdle - namely reading the MRZ at the base of the ID card - same as on a passport (that part that’s swiped when going through immigration control) - for example, my card starts “I<SWE5…” there are a lot these characters <<< in the code.
When trying to photograph/scan this part of card (or passport) I get an error: Unable to start text recognition. The cause may be that Google Play Services hasn’t finished downloading the necessary files yet. Please try again later.
I have tried searching for an app to get around the problem, including a Google one, but they do not change the error message.
Has anyone succeeded in using this service? Does anyone know how to get around this error?
Thanks in hope!
The thread I link is well off topic for your issue but it does explain in some detail why the workarounds of Google Play Services used by /e/ and microG are struggling in some cases.
Thanks MRTN and aibd for your input. I guess I do not require activating BankID and did not read the link above properly about activation of BankID. Different banks ‘had’ different schemes but maybe now the option for scanning ID/passport will become mandatory - which means probably that /e/ could not be used in Nordic countries as BankID could not be installed - it is pretty vital to function, certainly for living in Sweden.
(A bit off topic: before converting to /e/ on a One+ I owned a Huawei P40 - obviously Huawei do not have Google Play Services and on opening BankID I get the message BankID won’t run without Google Play Services, which are not supported on your device - that is to be expected but on touching the screen BankID starts normally and I can use it for normal BankID activities - however, obtaining the Digital ID card fails as previously described.)
It seems as discussed above, that core BankID appears to run fine on microG and gets around the need for Google Play Services issue but it is the machine reading software that is problematic.
I too noticed this possibility, and wondered if the cause is due to the machine reading being done remotely, and in this event the phone can be closely inspected as “Google trusted” by this remote server, before it delivers the answer.
I feel strongly that as citizens when we see Governments crippling their services to Google we should complain.
banking apps rely on either Google Vision API (already deprecated) or MLkit (successor) components to do camera recognition (qr, face) - both aren’t implemented yet in microG, and this is the reason Apps calling those functions fail at that point: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues?q=is%3Aissue+mlkit+OR+vision
The interest is raising, a part of the old Vision API was supported in microG (barcodes). But hard to tell from the outside if the project / marvin will dedicate time to this.
It’s way beyond ridiculous that a government(al app) makes you to not even use their program, but FORCES you to share your data with Google. Although not necessary! How can they MAKE you use the biggest commercial institute of the world? That’s just very poor, non-willing programming.
BankID is a product of Finansiell ID Teknik (Financial ID Tech), a consortium of several scandinavian banks.
You will need a physical passport or ID card issued by the swedish government to activate the digital ID in BankID but the digital ID within BankID is not issued by the government.
@Infinity It is very strange indeed but I think governments across the world, especially in EU, are starting to understand big risks for national safety and sovereignty with this technical dependency. Posting here too:
Well I just found out about this problem. I cant get a new BankID now.
I don’t really know what to do.
I am, well, fucked.
If this isn’t fixed I wont be able to use eOS and Murena any more.
No one in Sweden will be able to use this any more.
The problem will probably get bigger.
But you dont NEED the digital ID in order to use the BankID to identify, right? Or did they recently change this? Im asking because if I wont be able to use BankID at all to identify myself, I will definitely have to re-think ordering a Murena Fairphone 5 until this gets fixed…
Yes you NEED it now. They changed it not long ago. You have to identify yourself with an ID when getting/requesting to download a new BankID to your device. If they had use some open source tool like Tesseract OCR, GOCR, or Ocrad this would not have been a problem. So yes you have to rethink like I will have to do. I dont know how i will solve this at the moment. I will have to do one of these options: i have to root a regular android device and my murena to be able to backup and move BankID, install open gapps (will have to change recovery to twrp for this), install gapps (will have to change recovery to twrp for this), or install regular android. Or microg have to like add this feature now.
Wow, that really blows. Is it possible for the bank to activate this for me, if I waltz in there with my phone and ID and tell them my phone cant, for some reason, read the ID (play stupid)?
This may not be very helpful given the timeline and advanced apologies if I have missed the point.
I am reluctant to order a new BankID to test the problem (given the the above issues), I am also maxed out at the moment with my phones (Bank ID issued by the bank are limited in number) but I have not experienced the same problem. About 4-6 weeks ago I ordered a new BI from Handelsbanken and no ID card was needed then.
However, if I want a Digital ID to exist within BankID app then I cannot do that because of the problem of reading the code on the physical Swedish ID card.
I also have a Motorola Edge with E/OS/ V1.14 (not rooted for some reason) and also BankID running but I do not have a bank issued ID for the phone (if that makes sense) so the BankID App is at the moment dumb. From within the app I have requested a “New Bank ID” and it is asking me to scan a QR code or use a Activation Code (both issued by the bank). Those steps appear to be the normal route for obtaining a BankID from Handelsbanken.
Has something else happened recently or is this simply a bank management issue?
It is needed now. It might also be bank specific at the moment. Maybe Handelsbanken hasn’t activated this yet. But my bank has.
It is after these steps. After signing with an active BankID you will have to take a picture of your ID card and use the NFC on the card. Then you will get to download and activate a new BankID.
@goldcrest
May I ask what bank you are using? Just interested to know what I might expect if we use the same one. Also might give my bank a call about this, just to see what they say about the problem.
@goldcrest
Yep, things probably have changed.
One thing I forgot to mention is that I acquired all my Bank IDs by logging into my account on a PC (the login method for the PC is very different from the banking mobile app) and not through mobile phone banking app. Is that a way around the problem?
about activation of BankID. Different banks ‘had’ different schemes but maybe now the option for scanning ID/passport will become mandatory - which means probably that /e/ could not be used in Nordic countries as BankID could not be installed - it is pretty vital to function, certainly for living in Sweden.