France’s Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, has announced the official rollout of the country’s digital driver’s license system after successful trials in the regions of Hauts-de-Seine, Eure-et-Loir, and Rhône.
Residents holding a driver’s license in the contemporary credit card-shaped format in which they have been issued since 2021 are now able to establish virtual versions of the cards in the France Identité app, which is available for iOS and Android. It is a completely voluntary system, though the virtual driver’s licenses are now recognized as official, government-issued ID.
While France’s IDEMIA continues to pioneer American e-IDs that use a selfie-based onboarding system, France’s virtual driver’s license does not use facial recognition for enrollment. Instead, users are asked to scan their physical ID using their smartphone’s NFC reader capabilities. They also must log into their “Mes Points Permis” online account to download their “relevé d’information restreint” (RIR) driving records, which contains a QR code that they can scan to set up their mobile driver’s license.
The France Identité first launched in beta in June of 2021. A general public launch was soon to follow in the spring of 2022. So far, the primary purpose of the app has been to offer French citizens a means of proving their identity in online interactions, though it’s now poised to play a more prominent role in ID verification in in-person settings.
The wide rollout of the virtual driver’s license feature comes alongside a parallel digital ID effort in French healthcare. Early last year, authorities began testing the ‘Carte Vitale’ app in a handful of regions, with plans for a wider rollout in 2024. France’s data protection agency, “Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertés”, approved the use of facial recognition for selfie-based registration on the health card app, but only on a provisional basis—until the official rollout of France Identité.
With the latter now underway, it isn’t yet clear whether Carte Vitale will retain its biometric onboarding system, or when its own general launch might take place.
Source: The Connexion
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February 26, 2024 – by Alex Perala
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