Sweden is at war – and the Kremlin’s elite are laughing out loud

The power of Swedish banks has become a security risk

Andreas Cervenka

Reporter and economic commentator

This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are those of the writer.

Published 12.01

Bank-ID was hit by a massive overload attack last week. Photo: Martina Holmberg/TT

Sweden is at war. This is not the invention of some half-hysterical columnist, but has been confirmed by both the country’s prime minister and the heads of our intelligence services.

However, the enemy does not need to fire a single shot to cause chaos, terror and major damage. The fact is that it is so easy to get to us that the Kremlin’s elite are probably doubling over with laughter at naive Swedes.

Last week it happened again. A massive overload attack knocked out Bank-ID.

It's not just any IT system. A well-worn cliché states that it's not smart to put all your eggs in one basket.

Bank-ID is equivalent to an entire nation's annual egg consumption loaded onto a rickety boat at sea.

Of all registered Swedes between 18 and 67, 99.9 percent (!) use the service. These are figures that make North Korean elections seem like nail-biters.

Without Bank-ID, it's impossible to do banking, whether for private individuals or companies. It's also impossible to pay with Swish or log in to services that are important to what is usually called society; 1177, the Swedish Tax Agency, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, fill in any authority or company.

7,500 different services are connected, more than doubling in five years. In 2024, 7.6 billion logins were made. According to a survey, Swedes rank Bank-ID as the most important app of all.

In short: if Bank-ID stops, Sweden stops.

Bank-ID is owned by Sweden's banks, where Swedbank, Handelsbanken and SEB together control 75 percent, while four smaller banks own the rest.

It is the banks that decide who can become full citizens by granting them access to an account and a Bank-ID.

Sweden has thus outsourced perhaps the most critical part of our entire infrastructure to the private sector.

How lucky that there are backup solutions.

Many users were affected by the attack. Photo: Bankid

When the central bank of Ukraine visited the Swedish Riksbank last year and shared their experiences of trying to maintain a functioning payment system during a burning war, they highlighted one point in particular: cash is important.

Attention.

In Sweden, the use of banknotes and coins continues to fall, according to a report from the Riksbank.

In 2005, over 300 million cash withdrawals were made, last year only 50 million. The amount of cash in circulation in relation to GDP is (together with Norway) the lowest of all comparable countries, only about 1 percent compared to over 10 percent in the euro area.

The reason is spelled Swish. Or as the Riksbank writes: “Cash payments between private individuals have in many cases been replaced by the service”.

Swish is another bank-owned app with almost a hundred percent market share. The service has nine million users and 345,000 connected companies.

Conveniently enough for foreign powers, Swish is also dependent on Bank-ID.

Another weakness in Sweden is that it is not possible to pay with a card if the internet is down.

Turn off Bank-ID and Swish will also be turned off and if you also disrupt internet traffic, it will only be hours before the Swedish economy comes to a complete standstill.

A power outage like the one in Spain would have been harder to deal with in Sweden than in perhaps any other country.

Some readers might be thinking: haven't I read this before? Well, that's right.

Riksbank Governor Erik Thedeén. Photo: Lövkvist Malin

The absurditya of a system where private banks control everything to do with digital identification and payments has been debated for years. Very little has happened.

With an increasingly aggressive Russia, the situation has become acute. Or as the Riksbank puts it in official prose that reeks of understatement:

"Against the backdrop of the deteriorating security situation in Sweden and our immediate vicinity, both public and private actors urgently need to step up the work of creating a payments market that can withstand disruptions."

Blaming the banks is as pointless as scolding a microwave oven. The banks are like machines programmed to produce profit and nothing else.

The responsibility for Sweden making itself extremely vulnerable in such an important area as money rests with the politicians, who have done far too little to loosen the Swedish banking oligopoly. This complacency has developed into an acute security risk.

A slow awakening can be expected. In December, a report from the Ministry of Finance proposed that certain stores, as well as public institutions such as healthcare, must accept cash and that major banks are obliged to provide a functioning cash service throughout the country.

For an industry that generates around 200 billion in annual profits, the latter should be a manageable homework assignment.

So far, however, there are no legislative proposals on the table.

The police have also been tasked with developing a state-issued e-ID,

Good idea! If only it had come about ten years ago.

A faster way forward could be for the banks to kindly hand over ownership and control of Bank-ID to the state, in exchange for keeping their licenses.

That may seem very radical, almost crazy. In peacetime.

But now we are at war, according to those in the know.