FWIW in Germany we have PostIdent, which consists of taking a printout to the local post office, showing your ID card and then having the clerk fill out and sig

FWIW in Germany we have PostIdent, which consists of taking a printout to the local post office, showing your ID card and then having the clerk fill out and sign the printout and send it to the organisation you're trying to authenticate with. This is typically done for age restrictions in online delivery services (e.g. being able to order goods marked as 18+ on Amazon -- not signing up for porn sites or stuff like that), for example. The ID card technically comes with a PIN and there were supposed to be special readers that could be used with a handful of authorized online services to verify your identity but as far as I can tell not much came from that as end users would have needed to buy special hardware and services interested in using that would have required special licensing or something. That said, SMS is less secure than e-mail, so this seems like an odd choice these days (much like magnetic stripes rather than chip and pin).