Mississippi’s mobile driver’s license program faces its first real statewide test next month, as residents will be allowed to use their smartphones as their identification when they vote.

Hawaii is one of many states that could soon accept driver’s licenses on mobile devices. A spokesperson for the city and county of Honolulu says they are looking for ways to modernize the city and the potential for mobile IDs and touch-less technology is limitless.

Both Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration continue to expand the use of facial recognition technology to verify traveler identity, with both agencies touting both the security and customer experience benefits of using biometrics, while pledging to safeguard privacy and security.

Driver’s licenses could soon be available on cell phones in Pennsylvania, authorities said, as the state confirmed they are currently “exploring the concept” of taking the significant step toward digitizing more of daily life.

A new multi-country consortium of Europe’s most trusted identity experts has announced its proposal to deliver a large-scale, cross-border payments pilot strongly aligned with the aims of the European Commission’s EU digital ID wallet program.

“We had this mindset of, ‘OK, if we’re going to do this, we want it to work everywhere,’” says Ryan Williams, quality assurance manager at the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Driver License Division. “We felt that one of the keys [to success] is that you’ve got to have a place to use it. We could put the coolest technology out there, but if you can’t use it, it becomes a novelty on your phone, and something people are going to tire of quickly.”

More than 710K Greek citizens have used the Greek government’s Wallet app to create and store a digital version of their national identity card on their smartphone and more than 563K have used it to generate a digital version of their driving license since the service went live in July of 2022.

State officials say the new program is an easy way for Utahns to have another option to carry their official state ID. The pilot program was introduced in 2021 and since its inception, around 3,000 residents have signed up to digitize their IDs.

Android users in certain countries may have noticed a recent update replacing Google Pay with a new, multipurpose Google Wallet that stores digital identity cards. It impacts users in close to 40 countries across Europe and Middle East including the U.K., France, Belgium, Ireland, Germany and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Canadian government has quietly announced plans to pursue a digital ID program at the national level. The move aims to make services more convenient to access through a federal Digital Identity Program, integrated with pre-existing provincial platforms.