Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by tpmx on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @10:19AM (#26399571)

My understanding: After the recent money laundering revelations the banks have become relatively strict in accepting/keeping certain customers. I think that most of all the banks are afraid of being blacklisted/sanctioned by the US.

This leads to friction and situations where some people are essentially excluded from large parts of society.

The banks also don't seem to be all that interested in interacting with their invidual customers in the flesh.

I think the natural conclusion of this is that the issuing of electronic IDs becomes a government responsibility, decoupled from banking.

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by blfr on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @10:24AM (#26399626)

The banks also don't seem to be all that interested in interacting with their invidual customers in the flesh.

The feeling's mutual! I have been using the same bank for over 15 years and only visited once and by accident.

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by SahAssar on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @11:49AM (#26400626)

Wasn't all of those scandals tied to foreign branches of the banks and the strictness has mostly only been applied there? I might be wrong, but I haven't heard of swedish residents being denied banking.

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by tpmx on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:19PM (#26401006)

- 6-9 months ago I started reading online of mostly Swedbank customers who had suddenly been asked to move their monthly salaries to this bank, or they'd lose their accounts. These people were doing stock trading only via Swedbank.

- 18 months ago I tried to facilitate creating a corporate bank account managed by a foreign CEO from a non-EU and very first-world country in order to be able to create a Swedish company (AB) with the goal of hiring software people here in Sweden. Tried two banks (SEB and Handelsbanken) before giving up and going another route.

My impression is that Swedish banks have tightened up things quite a lot in the past few years.

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by SahAssar on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:40PM (#26401273)

Yeah, that first example does sound unexpected based on my experience. I might have to deal with something like the second example in the soon-ish future, mind telling me the route you took?

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by tpmx on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:48PM (#26401363)

You kinda need to have an EU-based CEO. Swedish-based is (marginally) easier.

There might be tricks via Cyprus or so, but that will only let you create the AB - you still need a Swedish corporate bank account to pay your employees the proper way.

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