Florida could be one of the first states in the United States to support digital identification.
As reported by Florida politics, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has announced that residents will soon be able to download a digital copy of their driver’s license to an app next month.
In an update before a Senate panel Tuesday, FLHSMV officials said the Florida Smart-ID app is now live, but not available to the public. The department is scheduled to publish the digital ID on Apple’s app store and Android’s Google Play store in mid-November.
Senate Transportation Committee Chair Gayle Harrell called smartphones a wonderful tool for digital driver’s licenses and other IDs. The state began the process to develop digital driver’s licenses in 2014.
“We all have these instruments in our pockets,” Harrell said. “They have become our way of life, our lifeline, truly, for the world.”
FLHSMV’s director of motorist modernization Terrence Samuel also revealed that the state is working with Apple to bring its digital IDs to the iPhone’s Wallet app.
Florida was left out of a recent list of states Apple is partnering with for Wallet digital IDs, in relation to Harrell. Samuel was surprised that the state was not on the list, but the department has now exchanged information with Apple in hopes of being added to the partner list.
“We don’t see anything to stop us from being on the list,” Samuel said.
Apple announced that it was looking to bring IDs to the Wallet app at WWDC in June. The measure would allow people to store a digital version of their driver’s license that could be used in place of a physical one. The company said that the TSA would be one of the first places to accept digital ID and that the states would be added one by one.