He gave a copy of his bank card to his ex-wife who was living in Uganda and using it there. The card was under his name though, which is against their policy. He could have easily gotten a card in her name, but he's extremely irresponsible in general (and doesn't really care what the rules are). They banned him for six months. He hasn't even bothered to figure out if it's automatically re-instated or whether he has to appeal. I don't know how such people live to be 65 years old.

The government isn't requiring BankID except for on their own services (where sometimes other options are provided). It's kind of just the most convenient thing that all agencies and businesses end up using. There's no laws around it, I mean. They all opted into it. It's run by a private consortium of banks.

BankID is owned by a cartel of our biggest banks but effectively, in real life, is basically mandatory. It's used with (mostly) everything here and it's hard to get a new one if you let some other things slip, like your passport or national ID card.