In Germany you need to do most things in person, by fax, and fill out paper forms.
In Sweden for example, you do everything online. Booking appointments, renewing subscriptions, insurance claims, getting test driving permits, renting homes.
You pretty much need this software called BankID, owned by the banks, which is used to verify your identity. It’s used literally everywhere.
If I need to pick up a parcel at the local post office, I’ll use the PostNord app to pull up a QR code and validate myself via BankID, then I scan the code at the robot which then fetches the parcel for me.
Cash isn’t really dying out here, it’s pretty much dead. Grocery stores still take cash but plenty of businesses don’t. Buses in my town stopped taking cash all over a decade ago. Even the bakery refuses cash. It’s viewed as a safety thing; if the bakery gets robbed what are they going to take? The massive appliances? Flour?
Doing bureaucracy online versus in person is just a convenience thing, German government agencies still enter your data into computer systems, they just have a massively convoluted process for it. I expect no privacy in those cases anyways.
But bankID does seem scary. A single point of failure for basically everything and centralized tracking of every transaction.
It’s not a convenience thing, it’s because the government fucked up the whole online thing. They started too late, they constantly miss the goals they set themselves, nobody seems to want to push things forward. It’s a bit frustrating. On the other hand, yeah privacy. If you ignore that the Finanzamt can check your bank account whenever they want without you being notified about it (yes, they need a reason, still…) and Krankenkassen knowing almost everything about your health because they get the bills from your doctor.
