Scan Passports and National ID Cards
While Apple Pay is focused almost exclusively on payment technology, many passports and national ID cards include NFC tags for easier scanning, and it looks like Japan and the U.K. are both lining up to support this on the iPhone.
The Japanese government plans to add support for NFC tag reading to its national ID system when iOS 13 launches later this year, while the U.K. government has already announced ReadID, a new NFC passport reader app for the iPhone. While it was originally believed that Apple was making a special exception for the U.K. government due to Brexit, it seems that this was actually just part of Apple’s broader plan to open up NFC in iOS 13.
While we don’t seem to have yet reached the point where you’ll be able to store your passport in your iPhone, we can’t imagine that’s too far off. For now, however, the ability to scan a passport or national ID card will still be very useful for providing authenticated identification when doing things like setting up mobile banking accounts.