Samsung Pay and Samsung Pass were combined into a single app last year: Samsung Wallet. The plan was for Wallet to support everything from credit cards to digital keys to government IDs, though some of those integrations are taking longer to set up than others. Samsung is now rolling out support for drivers’ licenses and state IDs in the Wallet app in the United States, but just like Apple’s implementation in the iPhone Wallet app, you can’t use it in all states.
Samsung announced in a press release, “Arizona and Iowa will be the first states to offer a mobile version of its driver’s license to their residents. The update expands the Samsung Wallet experience by adding a convenient and secure way to use state-issued IDs and driver’s licenses with a Galaxy smartphone, including the new Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5.” Arizona and Iowa residents will be able to add driver’s licenses to Samsung Wallet “later this year.”
It’s disappointing that Arizona and Iowa are the only states supported right now. Iowa has a total population of around 3.2 million people, and Arizona has around 7.4 million people, with both states only accounting for roughly 3% of people living in the United States. It’s up to each individual state to figure out a system for digital IDs (the US doesn’t have universal federal-level identity cards), so the process has been slow-going. Apple’s Wallet app also has a short list of supported states: just Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, and Maryland.
Samsung is also working with several more states to get digital IDs working, and the company is in discussions with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to accept mobile driver’s licenses at some federalized airports.
Even in states where digital drivers’ licenses and state IDs are permitted, it’s not clear how many people are willing to use them, especially when smartphone access around law enforcement continues to be an issue for privacy and safety. The ACLU has raised concerns that police could use a digital driver’s license verification as a pretext to search people’s phones. There have been many cases of police taking people’s phones under probable cause outside of legal warrants, and some police departments and federal agencies have used hacking tools to pull data from seized phones.
Source: Samsung
