Finnish identity card
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Finnish identity card ( fi, henkilökortti; sv, identitetskort) is one of two official identity documents in
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
, the other being the
Finnish passport Finnish passports are issued to nationals of Finland for the purpose of international travel. Aside from serving as proof of Finnish nationality, they facilitate the process of securing assistance from Finnish consular officials abroad (or othe ...
. Any citizen or resident can get an identification card. Finnish citizens will get indication of citizenship on the card. It is available as an electronic ID card ( fi, sähköinen henkilökortti; sv, elektroniskt identitetskort), which enables logging into certain services on the Internet, local computers or adding digital signatures into LibreOffice
ODF The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed wi ...
documents or creating
DigiDoc DigiDoc (''Digital Document'') is a family of digital signature- and cryptographic computing file formats utilizing a public key infrastructure. It currently has three generations of sub formats, ''DDOC''- , a later binary based ''BDOC'' and cur ...
formatted containers that also allows encryption during content transfer. ID card is applied at a police station and it is issued by the police. Possession of an ID card or any ID document is non-compulsory in Finland, though interactions with officials and companies, like voting, picking up a parcel from
Posti Posti can refer to: * ''Posti'' (1950 film), a Punjabi film * Posti Group, the Finnish national post office * Posti, Estonia, a place in south-eastern Estonia * Posti SA, tea company in Poland * ''Posti'' (2022 film), a Punjabi film {{Disa ...
offices or buying alcohol when a salesperson suspects buyer to be under 18 or 30 years old, can be difficult or impossible without an ID card, a passport or a driving licence. Driving licences and Kela (social security) cards with a photo are also widely used for general identification purposes even though they are not officially recognised as such. However, Kela has ended the practice of issuing social security cards with the photograph of the bearer, while it has become possible to embed the social security information onto the national ID card. In domestic non-electronic identification the driving licence has remained in a leading position, since most of the population have to have a licence anyway, and a driving licence is valid for almost every situation where non-electronic personal identification is needed. In some cases, an emergency ID card, valid between 15 days to 3 months, is issued.


Travel document

The Finnish identity card for citizens may be used as a travel document all over Europe (except
Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
,
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
,
Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
and
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
) as well as French overseas territories, Georgia, Greenland and Montserrat (for max. 14 days). However, due to Finnish regulations, direct outbound travel from Finland to non-EU/EFTA countries requires a passport. From 2 August 2021, the
European identity card National identity cards are issued to their citizens by the governments of all European Economic Area (EEA) member states except Denmark, Iceland and Ireland. Ireland however issues a passport card which is a valid document in the EEA and Swit ...
is intended to replace and standardize the various identity card styles currently in use in the EU/EEA. For travel within the
Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmar ...
no identity documentation is legally required for Nordic citizens due to the
Nordic Passport Union The Nordic Passport Union allows citizens of the Nordic countriesIceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finlandto travel and reside in another Nordic country without any travel documentation (e.g. a passport or national identity card) or a reside ...
.


Electronic ID Card

The electronic card was introduced in 1994 and the current version, which is valid for 5 years, was introduced in 2003. All issued ID cards nowadays are electronic with the exception of card for minors and temporary cards. It was initially planned as a general network authentication device for both public and private sector strong authentication needs. In 2009, however, the card was viewed by a government committee as a failure. There has been less than 300 000 cards around by 2011 out of population of 5.3 million. The rationale to apply for a card has mostly been traveling abroad. Only few dozen government services have adopted it, and only one bank adopted it as login card to their netbank. All banks in Finland use a national standard called
TUPAS TUPAS is a strong digital authentication method created by the Federation of Finnish Financial Services. TUPAS identification is a ''de facto'' standard for digital identification in Finland. It is used by all major Finnish banks including Aktia, ...
, which uses one-time passwords. Banks also provide TUPAS authentication to other Internet-enabled businesses. Since TUPAS requires no dedicated hardware, cost of a card reader and card itself have been main causes in the failure of the eID card. Also the card itself is quite expensive, 51 € in 2011. Earlier cost for a passport of the same 5 year validity period was the same as the cost of an ID card. In 2011 passport is only 2 € more expensive. Thus pricing and validity period have also been too close to passport and have offered no benefits compared to passport with the exception of being easier to carry in a wallet or a handbag. As of 2015, the card costs 55 € compared to 48 € for a passport (for both documents, if applied for online there will be a 4 € discount). In 2009 a committee recommended discontinuation of eID card. The card and certification service development and maintenance costs were listed as being excessive compared to limited use the card had seen. However, as of 2011 no action has been taken regarding the card or the citizen certificate. Finnish eID card experience, which is based on voluntary adoption and users-pay-full-costs-of-the-cards model, has proven to be a very different experience when compared to for example neighboring Estonian ID card.


See also

* National identity cards in the European Union


Notes


References

{{identity cards
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
Government of Finland