Anyone else using Apple Wallet for their drivers license?

[Eric]

I just set this up in CA and it seems like a great setup, wondering how mainstream it's become as I've been carrying my real wallet around less and less over the last couple of years. All of my cards on on my iPhone anyway, may as well add the license.

 

[Cmaier]

I just set this up in CA and it seems like a great setup, wondering how mainstream it's become as I've been carrying my real wallet around less and less over the last couple of years. All of my cards on on my iPhone anyway, may as well add the license.

i’ve had my license in the apple wallet since they enabled it, but I’ve never actually used it. It’s not accepted in very many places, and at TSA checkpoints I think it’d just slow things down. If you’re pulled over, you still need your real license, anyway.

Of course, there will come a time when digital ID’s will achieve parity, but it will take awhile for the governments to catch up with what everyone wants.

 

[Eric]

i’ve had my license in the apple wallet since they enabled it, but I’ve never actually used it. It’s not accepted in very many places, and at TSA checkpoints I think it’d just slow things down. If you’re pulled over, you still need your real license, anyway.

Of course, there will come a time when digital ID’s will achieve parity, but it will take awhile for the governments to catch up with what everyone wants.

Ugh, that's what I was wondering. Okay good to know.

 

[Cmaier]

Ugh, that's what I was wondering. Okay good to know.

the two places you can use it, right now, are a few airports and a few businesses that use it for age checks or identity checks.

When they turn on US Passport in wallet (I posted a new thread on this earlier), the same thing will likely be true; it certainly won’t be useable for international travel, at least not yet. At some point I guarantee that ICAO (the international standards body that, among other things, gave us the “NATO alphabet” (which is neither NATO nor an alphabet) and the e-passport standard used now around the world (the NFC features in the passport)) will create a standard for smartphone-based biometric passports.

 

[fischersd]

Yep - ultimately, we need to get standards across the vendors for Digital IDs (as with anything else). It's likely going to be another 5 years before we see the DL's up here, unless a tech company like Apple spearheads it...forcing the Provincial Governments to get off of their asses. *sigh*

 

[Herdfan]

My DL is in Wallet, but AZ has its own app and my license is in it as well.

No idea how well the Wallet version will be accepted, but the one in the AZ app is good for all official AZ business.

 

[Cmaier]

My DL is in Wallet, but AZ has its own app and my license is in it as well.

No idea how well the Wallet version will be accepted, but the one in the AZ app is good for all official AZ business.

California has its own app, too. It’s only useable in the same places as the wallet version, and has the additional problem that you need to re-authorize the license every once in awhile. It’s not even useable at the actual DMV, as far as I know.

 

[Eric]

California has its own app, too. It’s only useable in the same places as the wallet version, and has the additional problem that you need to re-authorize the license every once in awhile. It’s not even useable at the actual DMV, as far as I know.

Feels like we should be there in the digital age, just goes to show how far behind the Government is when it comes to the technology. As a consultant for Office 365 in the cloud, Government specifically needed their own version (GCC) not just for security reasons but because it had to have crippled (for lack of a better word) versions of MS apps that didn't have a lot of the latest features. Bureaucracy will always be bureaucracy I guess.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Feels like we should be there in the digital age, just goes to show how far behind the Government is when it comes to the technology. As a consultant for Office 365 in the cloud, Government specifically needed their own version (GCC) not just for security reasons but because it had to have crippled (for lack of a better word) versions of MS apps that didn't have a lot of the latest features. Bureaucracy will always be bureaucracy I guess.

It is kind of absurd that in 2025 if you get caught driving without a government issued piece of plastic in your pocket you are breaking the law.

I recently renewed my license online and it got lost in the mail. Just spoke to the DMV about it today and they issued me an absolutely impossible to duplicate (ha!) extension PDF to print and keep in my wallet. Maybe they use an official government font that is undetectable by the untrained eye but is instantly recognizable by the highly trained traffic cop.

Possibly related, but I couldn't get it to work in Apple Wallet. Said there's some information discrepancy with the DMV.

 

[Cmaier]

It is kind of absurd that in 2025 if you get caught driving without a government issued piece of plastic in your pocket you are breaking the law.

well, there really haven’t been great alternatives until lately. If the police stop you, they have to know who you are, and they can’t take your word for it. Usually, if you have another valid form of ID (a passport, say) and they run your name/DOB and find you are licensed, they’ll let you go with a warning. Some departments have fingerprint readers and may let you off with a warning if you come back as a registered driver.

The issue with phones is there just isn’t a secure standard yet, and if it’s going to be Apple Wallet then every cop will need to carry an appropriate reader with them (which, conceivably, could be an app on their own phones). Takes time.

 

[Eric]

Possibly related, but I couldn't get it to work in Apple Wallet. Said there's some information discrepancy with the DMV.

Their requirements are stringent, I was surprised at everything you had to do. You have to wonder if it spotted that it was a print and not the real thing.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Their requirements are stringent, I was surprised at everything you had to do. You have to wonder if it spotted that it was a print and not the real thing.

I’m thinking it might be because I scanned the front of my expired license which has the expired date. But if you login to the DMV site which requires an elaborate face scan routine it states that my (renewed) license doesn’t expire for 5 years. So it might be to prevent people stealing your expired physical license and attempting to use it…for what? By this threads own admittance, not much.

 

[Alli]

Still only available in a few states. I'd love it to be available and accepted everywhere.

 

[Nycturne]

WA public services is surprisingly slow on the uptake of certain tech. We haven't agreed to allow digital DLs yet, and the regional transit card doesn't work with smartphones yet either.

 

[rdrr]

Don’t expect this administration to spearhead any standard for digital IDs. Heck they are complaining that MA realID isn’t good enough and there have been rumblings that they make it invalid for domestic flights.

 

[Andropov]

Wish Apple's digital IDs would come to more countries. Here in Spain the government made an app to carry your driver's license instead of the physical copy. They claimed it would be have the exact same validity as the physical one.

Tiny issue: the app's servers regularly go down for hours at a time, and the app doesn't work without connecting to the server. They fined a bunch of people who thought they had the driver license in the app but couldn't get it to work when needed. Fun.