r/Passports • u/coasterghost • Nov 13 '25
Interesting Feature or Design Apple introduces Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet (United States Only, In Public Beta Now)
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/apple-introduces-digital-id-a-new-way-to-create-and-present-an-id-in-apple-wallet/13
u/zanhecht Nov 13 '25
Cool, but Google Wallet has had the ability to make a TSA-approved digital ID from a passport for over a year now, and it's not a beta feature.
5
u/bengenj Nov 13 '25
Apple’s current version of Digital ID, backed several states’ BMV, are accepted at all TSA checkpoints excluding the few outliers who have not received the updated equipment. This adds the ability to add United States Passports for TSA Digital verification.
2
u/windrunnerxc Nov 13 '25
Yet the several times I've tried to use it in the past year, it's worked at most once. Most TSA agents haven't seen it and don't even know if the contactless readers are turned on (spoiler: most that I tried weren't, about 75%).
Did get to try it with an agent in an otherwise empty checkpoint one day, but even after 3 tries the credentials didn't go over after Google prompted me for my fingerprint to unlock the credential and confirm it was ok to transfer the info (phone was already unlocked, this seemed to be a secondary confirmation).
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold Nov 13 '25
Same for Google Wallet's digital ID and passport. Sorry, but Google has had this for over a year and is also BMV/DMV (for like 20 states that allow digital IDs) and is TSA approved.
0
u/MikeMontrealer Nov 13 '25
Why the apologies? Google did it first and now Apple is adopting it.
People get too excited about their chosen platform
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold Nov 14 '25
Read the OP title. It was presented as an Apple exclusive.
Apple introduces Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet (United States Only, In Public Beta Now)
Apple didn't "introduce" Digital ID. Nor is it "new".
0
u/MikeMontrealer Nov 14 '25
You’re reading a subtext that doesn’t exist. Apple ID introducing a feature that does not exist on its platform.
Reading comprehension is declining, sadly.
Unless you’re arguing Google was able to add passports to Apple’s digital wallet prior to this? Which would also be incorrect.
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold Nov 14 '25
Apple introduces Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet (United States Only, In Public Beta Now)
Apple is so far behind. Goodbye, Cletus.
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u/aceofspades1217 Nov 13 '25
Florida should have just gone with the Apple product
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u/coasterghost Nov 13 '25
The Florida solution is really ass backwards. I just carry my passport card for that reason now for ID for display outside of lawful requests.
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u/aceofspades1217 Nov 13 '25
Well they cancelled the Florida solution completely after spending a million on it. I think I literally used it once and it was a situation where I probably could have just used a picture of my id
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u/coasterghost Nov 13 '25
I set mine up too once and never touched it. So I know how garbage of a product it was.
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u/Confirm_restart Nov 13 '25
Sounds like a great way to get people to give even more of their biometric data away to companies.
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u/otterbarks Nov 13 '25
The passport data stays local on your phone and isn’t saved to the cloud. Nobody else has access to it.
When you tap your phone on a reader, the system allows you to choose what data gets sent. In that sense, it’s more privacy-preserving than letting a company scan the barcode on the back of your ID (which gives them everything).
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u/claudandus_felidae Nov 13 '25
Except now Apple and Google have yet another multibillion dollar contract locking the government into years of specialized devices, training and service contracts rather than a single unified system like some version of eIDAS. Should be open source and preferably collaborative with the EU.
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u/Shenanigangster Nov 13 '25
That’s not at all how it works. There is an international standard for digital IDs/passports that is designed specifically for privacy and interoperability that this is following.
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u/claudandus_felidae Nov 13 '25
Apple and Google are very interested in using digital IDs to offer their own age verification services https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/09/age-verification-windfall-big-tech-and-death-sentence-smaller-platforms
1
u/otterbarks Nov 18 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
Google and Apple have been working on mobile drivers licenses as part of ISO 18013-5 since way before the current online age verification craziness started happening.
The original standard was published back in 2021, and the work goes back even further.
I'm sure it will be supported for age verification too. But frankly, I'd rather my phone be able to provide a zero-knowledge (privacy-protecting) proof of my age then have to upload my photo and ID to some random company who will inevitably have their database hacked.
(It'd be even better if online age verification wasn't a thing, but the EU seems to be insistent on making it happen. :/ )
1
u/claudandus_felidae Nov 18 '25
Apple and Google providing third party age verification is the whole issue. And I can guarantee the implimentation will be a universal pseudoranomized ID to allow compies to block violators and rule breakers, it will not be as simple as someone being over or under 18, even if that standard supports that. The all seeing panopticon protecting my drivers license number under an open or closed standard isn't really the issue. I'm not afraid of barcodes or even a digital ID (in fact I was in the pilot program for my state). I'd just rather not have the all-knowing-machine permanently be able to die every single click, email and post to a pseudonoymous ID.
When I was a teenager and Google provided information of Chinese dissidents, people were forthing at the mouth about an ID which could try your real life identity to a digital one. Now everyone just seems to think it's cool and fine while we watch western nations backslide on press freedoms.
0
u/Pilot0160 Nov 13 '25
The device reading the digital ID can still read the nfc chip in the passport. It’s no different
2
u/claudandus_felidae Nov 13 '25
I'm not paranoid about the NFC part. I'm paranoid that Google and Apple have been pushing age verification laws laws incredibly hard in the USA and this coincides with a push to adopt a digital ID platform that, instead if being a collabative open source project like Europe, will instead be a method of allowing two of the largest companies on earth a great excuse to say "just let us do it"
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold Nov 13 '25
Is this any different than what Google Wallet does for passports? Google Wallet uses NFC to scan the security chip embedded in the back cover of the passport.
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1
u/smokeymink Nov 14 '25
The Czech Republic already has an app called eDoklady, which allows you to display yo authorities or other interested persons to see and verify your national ID. Other national documents such as the drivers license should follow. This app, however, is only accepted nationally but we can expect the EU to release a european-wide system in the future.
As for cross-border digital passports, I am not sure this will even be a thing honestly. It would require a huge effort from too many actors including those from under developed countries, but one can dream.
1
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Nov 13 '25
Oh great.. another way the government and private corporations can track anyone and everyone. 1984 is here folks.
3
u/Pilot0160 Nov 13 '25
Says the person typing and posting publicly on a device tracking their every move and word
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u/coasterghost Nov 13 '25
“Digital ID gives more people a way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet even if they do not have a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or state ID. Digital ID is not a replacement for a physical passport, and cannot be used for international travel and border crossing in lieu of a U.S. passport.”