> Work on developing BankID as a joint infrastructure started in 2000, and the first customers got BankID in 2004. In 2014, BankID Norway AS was established. In 2018 BankID merged with Vipps and BankAxept in order to improve product offering and prepare for competition against global tech firms.
I have both MinID and BankID and I can use either of them for things like taxes and such.
Statens Vegvesen, who are in charge of driver licenses and more, allow us to sign in with BankID and a couple of other methods, but not with MinID from what I can tell.
Norge.no, which is a guide developed by the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, has the following to say about MinID and BankID:
> Electronic IDs are available at different security levels, and thus give access to slightly different types of services.
> MinID is at a medium-high security level ("Significant"), and can be used for many public services, but not for health services at helsenorge.no, for example.
> BankID, Buypass and Commfides, which can also be used for public services, are at the highest security level (“High”) and give access to all public services.
But those aren't by the government, or at BankID isn't. It's a proprietary application from a private company, owned by the banks, which only works on certain operating systems.
Estonia though has an electronic ID which uses X.509 certificates.
> those aren't by the government, or at BankID isn't
MinID is by the government. BankID is private.
> It's a proprietary application from a private company, owned by the banks, which only works on certain operating systems
If you want to use the BankID app to generate codes then you will need iOS or Android. But you don't need the BankID app to use BankID.
Instead of using the BankID app, you can use a physical dongle to generate codes.
The device that you sign in with needs nothing other than Internet and a modern web browser. You can sign in with BankID on Linux or whichever other platform you desire. This device does not need to run any proprietary code aside from maybe some JavaScript executed by the browser.
Very many years ago the device needed Java to sign in with BankID, but that has not been the case for many years.
That exists, but it's a PITA typing codes back and forth, and more importantly no place I've tried accepts it as a login method, other than the bank's own website (and it locks you out from some options when logging in like that). Some might work with the BankID application installed on PC (which also only works on some operating systems), and other places specifically requires mobile BankID.
So yes, you do need to use the BankID app, not just in case you "want" to use BankID, but in order to be able to log into some sites period.
