In motor vehicle regulation, the pandemic accelerated what has been a gradual transition to serving customers remotely. “The evolution of mobile driver’s licenses and the recognition of being able to do transactions without exchanging a physical document certainly fits within that,” said Ian Grossman, vice president of member services and public affairs for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA). “Being able to empower customers to have a credential that they can use in a transaction where they’re not passing back and forth a physical document has been further accelerated by the pandemic.”
Arizona rolled out its mobile driver’s license (mDL) app in March 2021. Eric Jorgensen, director of Arizona’s Department of Transportation, is leading his state’s nascent mDL initiative. He wants to make clear, however, that the state has its sights set on something much bigger.
A 2020 white paper by an industry consortium called the Secure Technology Alliance highlights some of the reasons states are intrigued by mobile IDs, described as a “new way of cryptographically verifying identity.”