The digital age continues to evolve, with AI, or synthetic intelligence, the speak of the city and digital know-how revolutionizing drugs, training, shopper gross sales, and extra. We already carry our bank cards and live performance tickets on our telephones. Now, even our ID playing cards are going digital and are extensively accepted, together with by the TSA. Apple customers have been in a position so as to add a license or different kind of ID to the Apple Pockets since 2022, and Android house owners can add theirs to their Google Pockets. A number of states already supply digital driver’s licenses, together with California, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, and extra. As of mid-November 2025, Illinois has joined the membership.
The state’s Normal Meeting accredited the brand new legislation in 2024 that may permit state residents to hold IDs on their cellphones. At first, the choice will solely be accessible to iPhone and Apple Watch house owners of their Apple Wallets, however the state plans to quickly broaden the service to Google and Samsung wallets, although it didn’t disclose precisely when this can occur. Referred to as “the way forward for licensing and proof of id” by the American Affiliation of Motor Car Directors, digital licenses supply extra than simply comfort. They don’t seem to be as simply misplaced or stolen (so long as your cellphone is locked to others), cannot be simply broken, and do not supply as a lot data as your bodily ID, permitting you to select and select what others see. Tech fans in Illinois should not put their wallets away simply but, nevertheless — they are going to nonetheless be required to hold their bodily ID playing cards.
How digital ID works
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who introduced the brand new digital driver’s license initiative, stated that the modernization is smart, calling it “innovation that protects your privateness, saves time and makes your life simpler.” So why should customers proceed carrying bodily IDs? Companies and legislation enforcement are usually not required to simply accept digital IDs, and may nonetheless ask to see a bodily card. That is partly as a result of just some companies may have the tools wanted to scan cellular IDs, although a cellular app was made accessible across the identical time the initiative launched.
Nonetheless, customers will be capable of show their digital IDs once they’d quite not put all of their private data on show, together with these instances when they should confirm their age. Until the cardholder scans their face, the Apple Pockets will solely show their first title and final preliminary, preserving different data like their deal with personal. It is a easy course of so as to add your ID to your Apple Pockets – begin by tapping the “plus” button after which observe the prompts, which can embody taking a photograph of your ID. In Illinois, customers won’t ever be requested handy over their telephones. They will merely faucet identical to a bank card, and the data is transmitted.
If you wish to give the tech a strive, the Nationwide Cybersecurity Alliance recommends that you simply solely use official apps or wallets and replace these apps often, allow biometrics in your cellphone, and by no means ship a screenshot of your digital ID to anybody.
