The mobile driver's license is hitting its tipping point — states just need to give it a shove

The driver's license became America's identity card by accident. It was meant to prove you could drive; it ended up proving you're who you say you are at the bank, the bar, the airport and more. 

Now, the plastic card is getting a digital upgrade. It's the same license, issued by the state, but in an unfakeable digital format, finally fit to really prove identity in the online age.

So far, mobile driver's licenses have mostly been trapped on our phones, useful only for hustling through a TSA line or buying a Coors Light at a small handful of venues able to read them. The future of the mDL is remote verification: sharing your identity credential securely straight from your phone to open a bank account, prove your age, or onboard onto a gig work app.

In a demo during a California Department of Motor Vehicles showcase, a would-be Grubhub delivery driver signing up on their phone consents in their phone's wallet to share three DMV-attested fields (name, date of birth, license number) and is verified in seconds. This is faster, easier and more secure. 

Blurry photos of plastic cards full of sensitive information don't multiply across servers. Only necessary data is shared. And because it's all signed by the state's cryptographic key, there's no way to fake any of it. AI can now create flawless images of fake licenses for pennies, but it can't fake a state's signature.

That capability is now live, and it's one reason I think the mDL is nearing a tipping point.

A few years ago you could count the issuing states on one hand. Today, 21 states and Puerto Rico issue mDLs, more than 8 million credentials are active, and roughly 45% of Americans live somewhere they could get one this afternoon. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators projects that crossing the halfway mark will kick adoption into a higher gear.

Use cases are multiplying just as fast. Fans are buying beer at Camden Yards and Wrigley Field with a tap. TSA accepts mDLs at a growing list of airports, police departments are piloting patrol-car readers, and Georgia's will require every law enforcement agency to accept mDLs by mid-2027. Each tap builds the habit, and the habit builds demand.

But the in-person tap was never where digital ID would earn its keep. The verifications that matter most happen remotely, when someone opens a bank account, claims a benefit, or onboards to a gig platform. The current system leans on a photo of a plastic card, precisely the thing generative artificial intelligence has learned to counterfeit. In 2023, the IRS's identity-theft filters flagged nearly 1.1 million tax returns claiming $6.3 billion in refunds. You're checking a picture of a card, not confirming that the DMV stands behind it.

This is what the Grubhub demo was really about. mDLs can now be presented and verified remotely, over the internet, with the same assurance as an in-person tap. California and Georgia were among the first states to switch this on. California went further than most: it built an open ecosystem that any relying party can integrate with directly, rather than routing everything through the wallet providers' gates.

When anyone, anywhere, can onboard to any service with the mDL on their phone, digital identity stops being a demo-day curiosity and becomes boring infrastructure, like the power grid: invisible, essential, interesting only when it fails.

We're getting closer every day, but we're not there yet. So what's holding us back? Four things.

First, more states need to follow California's lead and make remote presentation of their mDLs easy for verifiers to access. Remote acceptance creates use cases; use cases make an mDL worth having; adoption justifies the state's investment and attracts still more use cases. It's a flywheel, but somebody has to get it spinning, and only a small handful of states have added momentum.

Second, the OEM wallets — Apple, Google, Samsung — need to streamline the process through which verifiers like Persona can access mDLs on behalf of relying parties. The credential's authority comes from the DMV's signing key. The wallet shouldn't be a bottleneck throttling the utility of the state's own credential.

Third, it's time for the rest of the states to get moving. An mDL is most useful when it's universal; a platform onboarding drivers in 50 states can't build around a credential that exists in 21 states and Puerto Rico. Most of the Northeast and big states like Texas and Florida are conspicuously absent from the adoption map. Every state that waits on issuing an mDL is deferring fraud savings for its own agencies, businesses, and residents.

Fourth, states need to answer the privacy question head-on. Done right, digital credentials protect privacy far better than photos of plastic cards: a bar can see that you're over 21 without seeing your address, and a delivery platform can capture three verified fields rather than a picture of your entire ID. 

But the benefit holds only if verifiers can't quietly ask for more than a transaction requires. States should require data minimization, prohibit tracking, and keep the plastic card working for anyone who prefers it. Adoption will be broader and sturdier if worries about privacy and data security are answered directly by lawmakers.

Nothing here requires a breakthrough. It requires, well, meetings, and a dash of political will. The meetings are already happening: at showcases like the California DMV's, in AAMVA's working groups, in the standards bodies. 

States that move now will spend the next few years watching their credentials verify unemployment claims, bank accounts, and gig workers. States that issue but don't enable remote verification will have spent millions on the equivalent of a passport to a country nobody can visit. States that haven't issued at all will be stuck in the plastic past.

The identity system we inherited is an accident of the automobile age. We can build a better one with intention: infrastructure for the internet age, made by states that decided not to wait.

Will Wilkinson is director of government affairs at Persona.