Let's See Some ID.

The digital world in which we live, while sometimes daunting in its reach, does bear the fruit of convenience. It also offers secure storage for things we’d rather keep safe from prying eyes and criminals. It’s this security beyond that of a simple pass or card which has led to the development of virtual wallets built into our mobile devices, Apple Pay or Android Pay being the highest profile examples. The evolution of this however is bringing forth the ability to make redundant even more wallet-filling-material. Will the humble leather billfold be rendered obsolete by the shiny, glass powerhouse which lives two pockets over?

Mobile wallets and their ability to store payment cards, boarding passes, tickets and coupons have been around for more than a decade. Google was actually first to market with a solution, as their 2011 handsets were equipped with NFC technology; thus enabling the “tap to pay” functionality we take for granted now. 2012 saw Apple’s own Passbook launch, which became Apple Pay a little later. Personally I can’t remember the last time I used a paper boarding pass. My airline’s app puts the pass straight into my Apple Wallet, and I scan it from my phone before boarding. It’s convenient and most importantly: it’s difficult to misplace. I also routinely use the cards loaded into the same digital wallet to pay for groceries with simply a tap of my watch. My favorite technologies are seamless and convenient, this checks both boxes.

But what about that security we mentioned? Well when you load a card or a ticket into your digital wallet, it’s protected by the same method which you’re using to secure your phone. Be that a PIN, fingerprint or use of face unlock; your card numbers and other data is encrypted and housed behind that additional layer which your physical card doesn’t offer. It’s this secure manner of housing card numbers and other data which is driving the expansion of how we use these device-based wallets as a whole. We already trust them with credit cards, why not migrate some of the other things we keep in our back pocket?

Digital ID will be the next thing absorbed by our phones, and really it’s easy to see why. In a time when we can load our car keys onto our phone and leave those at home, why not the license allowing us to operate that vehicle in the first place? This isn’t just theory, either. Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arizona and many more states either have solutions already in place or are working toward them for launch in the near future. A digital drivers license is more difficult to illegally replicate, harder to damage, follows you between devices and doesn’t get left behind on a photocopier. To my mind, it makes so much sense. We’ve been securing passports with RFID tags for years, it stands to reason that the paper parts of these official IDs would become obsolete in time.

There are challenges here, no doubt. The largest of which is getting everyone to agree on a national, if not global system of ascertaining the legitimacy of any digital documents. It’s a large problem for something like a drivers license, but a huge one for a passport. A police officer can easily run a license number to check if an ID is real, but a liquor store owner or auto finance clerk may not have that luxury. Once we’ve bounded these hurdles though, I do look forward to a time where we’ve simply one, all-unlocking and identifying, item to remember to not leave at home.