We initially thought that once we had our own personnummer (here’s the blog on how we applied for the Swedish personal number), everything will be OK but apparently not because we found out that in order to open a bank account here in Sweden, most of the banks require for us to present our Swedish ID card aside from the personnummer. It’s very important that you open a bank account as you’ll be needing the bank details to give to your HR for your salary at work. Sweden is also a cashless society wherein they usually pay via their credit/debit card or thru Swish (most of the establishments here do not accept cash). There was this one instance in IKEA where we’re about to pay however they informed us that they can only accept payments from cards with a PIN code. Our credit card in the Philippines that we have been using doesn’t have one, so this really pushed us to have a need to open a bank account here in Sweden. Also, once you open your bank account, you’ll be getting also a Mobile Bank ID which is an important e-identification since this will be linked to other government agencies like Arbetsformedlingen (Swedish Public Employment Service) and Forsakringskassan (Swedish Social Insurance Agency). So we immediately set out on this task and here’s how to apply for Swedish ID card.
You need to book an appointment for this. Go to the website of Skatteverket and click on this option:
Once you click on that link, this will show you the following options:
We initially watched the video about ID cards and once done, we checked the “Offices that issue ID cards”. After which, we then read the section “Before you apply for an ID card and read its conditions first. Below is the checklist for the ID card application.
Once we’re done reading the entire page, we selected this part to book an appointment already. (it’s indicated above the Checklist, see the highlighted part below)
Once you click on the link that says: “Make an appointment for your application of ID card”, you will then be directed to this page:
Choose the “ID card” option in the field that says: Choose type of appointment. And then click on the “Make an appointment” blue button. Then, you will be directed to this page.
Read everything again and scroll down to the bottom and check on the box as highlighted on the above picture, then click on Next.
For us, we selected Malmo and then chose 2 for the number of people (me & my husband) and then check on the schedule. If the first date shows nothing available, then click on your preferred date that will show an indicated time in green color, that means that time is available. It looks like this:
Once you’ve selected your preferred time, click on Next and you’ll just have to fill the “Personal Data” part until you finish everything and reach the “Summary” part.
Once you’re done, you will be receiving a confirmation email for your booked appointment. It comes from “SKV” and it looks like this (I have it translated already as we received the email in Swedish):
Now it’s very important that you pay the fee before going to your appointment and it’s 400 SEK per person. On our end, we paid this thru Forex Bank and because they have a commission for this, (100 SEK per person), we ended up paying 1000 SEK for us both (400 + 100 SEK per person). You’ll be presenting the receipt once you go to Skatteverket’s office.
Once there, we fell in line for a separate queue assigned for ID card applications. Once inside, we were asked to present our resident permit and marriage certificate and also the receipt that we paid. They had us also measured our height (like the ones that we did on the resident permit card application, here’s our blog for this). And then we were given an information sheet that we need to present to them once we claim the cards. We were told that the processing of the ID card will take 6 -8 weeks. We had our booking appointment last November 5, 2020 and we claimed the cards by December 11, 2020. Once we had the card, we then tried to open a bank account. Will be sharing on a different blog post about our experiences with 3 different major banks. 💟
Be grateful and kind,
websynne
