Android now supports digital credentials like IDs and passports

Over the past year, we’ve seen a lot of effort from Google to expand its Wallet app to handle more and more things. While it used to be a place just for your debit and credit cards, it’s now become a digital locker that can store pretty much anything. Whether it’s boarding passes, event tickets, transit passes, loyalty cards, hotel keys, you name it — Google Wallet can take it and keep it safe.

Perhaps one of the more interesting additions, which has support from local and federal governments, is the ability to digitally add your state ID to your Wallet. It has taken quite some time, but more and more states in the US are getting on board, making a completely digital lifestyle a near reality. With that said, Google has taken a major step to prepare for what’s on the horizon by bringing native support for digital credentials to Android.

So how does this differ from what’s happening now?

Well, in the meantime, you shouldn’t really see any changes to the way things operate when it comes to Android or wallets. But Google has shared through their Android Developer Blog that is has now made an update to the “Credential Manager’s DigitalCredential API,” which “now natively supports OpenID4VP and OpenID4VCI for digital credential presentation and issuance respectively.”

It’s important to be clear as well, because digital credentials aren’t just images of current physical documents or forms of identification that you have in hand, but they are “cryptographically verifiable documents.” There’s a digital signature of sorts attached to these forms of ID that will allow app developers to take advantage of, which will be able to be used as a valid form of identification across a variety of systems.

Now, this can come in the form of an app that stores your boarding pass, or something more simple, like the app from your insurance company that holds your insurance card. Google labels these types of apps as “credential holders” and perhaps the most popular example in the current space is going to be Google and Samsung Wallet.

The important thing here is that with this new change, or integration within Android, you’re also going to get better interoperability, allowing credential-holder apps to interact with other apps or websites. And the best part is that all of this happens in a secure and safe manner, with Google highlighting that this type of exchange would be protected using Client to Authenticator Protocol (CTAP).

The great part about this change is that it streamlines the process a bit more, getting directly to the digital credential, rather than having the user be directed to the wallet first. Users would be able to house multiple credentials across multiple wallets. For the most part, this is still in its early stages, but Google did share that Samsung Wallet and 1Password are on board for future implementation.