Your ID and Digital Keys in Wallet
Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s VP of Wallet and Apple Pay took the stage to explain how iOS 15 is taking an even bigger step to help your iPhone replace your wallet in its entirety.
While you can already store credit cards, loyalty cards, tickets, boarding passes, public transit cards, and even your Car Key in Apple’s Wallet app, Apple is now filling in the last important piece of the puzzle with more digital keys and ID cards.
Home Keys will allow you to store a digital key for your front door, assuming you’re using a compatible lock — of which there are about a dozen partners already on board to start producing these locks. Corporate badges will also be supported, as will hotel keys.
In this last case, Hyatt Hotels is ready to roll out the hotel key support to over 1,000 properties worldwide, beginning this fall, with an experience that will allow you to receive your room key for an online booking even before you arrive at the hotel.
In the case of Home Keys, it’s not entirely clear how this will differ from simply using a HomeKit-compatible door lock, although obviously, it’s an easier solution for those who haven’t gone in for the full HomeKit experience.
Apple is also working with several U.S. states to allow your driver’s license and other forms of official ID to be scanned into the wallet app, where they’ll be encrypted and safely stored in the iPhone’s Secure Element.
It’s unclear which states are going to be on board with this, but Bailey did add that Apple is also working with the TSA to enable these digital IDs to be used directly from the Wallet app at airport security checkpoints.
When “showing” a digital ID, Apple will also present a card similar to the App Store Privacy labels that will indicate which information from the digital ID will be shared with the scanning terminal.