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.

In 2020, the Utah legislature passed measures to begin a pilot program for mobile driver’s licenses. Two years later, one of the country’s largest credit unions announced it will immediately begin accepting mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) as a valid form of identification.

America First Credit Union ($17 billion in assets, 1.2 million members) in Riverdale, Utah said all of its 121 branches in Utah and Arizona will accept mDLs for ID verification for all banking transactions.

Selecting the best mobile wallet for an mDL requires states to think about how to bring users an enjoyable experience while serving the public interest — and maintaining security, interoperability, and compliance with ISO standards…

A year-long mobile driver’s license pilot program is now almost at the finish line. Utah residents could see mDL’s fully launch in a few weeks, according to the Director of the Utah Driver License Division. Officials are working with relying parties that would utilize ID verification along with businesses that would accept the mobile ID including retail, banking and more.