West Virginia Joins Apple Wallet
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A year after Apple announced that West Virginia would be bringing its mobile driver’s licenses to Apple Wallet, state officials are finally ready to turn the key and make it official.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey announced the rollout today, telling Charleston’s WSAZ that the state has “officially launched support for drivers license and state issued IDs in Apple Wallet.”
The West Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has a guide on how to add your driver’s license or state ID to Apple Wallet, but the short version is that it works like adding any other card: just open the Wallet app on your iPhone, tap the plus button in the top right corner, and choose Driver’s License and ID Cards. Since the list is alphabetical, West Virginia should appear at the bottom, right above Japan’s My Number card. Unlike some states that impose a small verification fee, there’s no charge for West Virginians to use a digital ID in Apple Wallet.
Apple has also updated its Digital ID page to include the new addition, bringing the total number of states and territories that support digital driver’s licenses in Apple Wallet to 13, including Puerto Rico.
West Virginia is the third state to join Apple Wallet this year, following Montana in August and North Dakota last month. After a flurry of launches in late 2024 — from Ohio and Hawaii to California and Puerto Rico — the pace has slowed a bit this year.
Still, it shows that more states are warming up to the modern era of smartphone-based IDs. We’ve come a long way from September 2021, when Apple introduced the feature in iOS 15.1. Back then, eight states had signed on, but only half of those have come through. Arizona and Maryland were the first in early 2022, followed by Georgia in 2023, and Iowa in 2024.
Meanwhile, Connecticut, Kentucky, and Oklahoma are still missing, and Utah has decided to go exclusively with Google Wallet — for now, at least. That’s not to say they aren’t coming to Apple Wallet eventually, but it’s been a long wait considering they were on Apple’s initial list. Meanwhile, eight other states and territories have beaten them to the punch.
What Can a Digital Driver’s License Be Used For?
While some states, like Ohio, have been more proactively encouraging businesses to support digital IDs for things like identity and age verification, West Virginia appears to be taking a more measured approach. WSAZ reports that “using your ID through Apple Wallet is only accepted at the airport,” although the WV DMV FAQ acknowledges that it can be used “in person at businesses and organizations with compatible mobile ID readers and in select apps that require identity or age verification.”
Two years ago, Apple added a new framework in iOS 17 that allows developers to build apps that can read digital IDs from Apple Wallet. However, this isn’t something an iPhone can do without specific apps designed to take advantage of these capabilities. In Ohio, the state government created its own age-verification app for businesses, but it appears to be the exception so far, and there’s no word on whether West Virginia plans to follow suit.
Either way, you’ll still need to carry your physical driver’s license or state ID with you. Law enforcement officials aren’t equipped to handle digital driver’s licenses, and even though the TSA was the first agency to accept digital IDs in early 2022, it’s limited to around 20 US airports, and Paige Withrow, chief marketing officer for West Virginia International Yeager Airport, told WSAZ: “Still keep that ID with you, but it helps not getting everything out of your pockets at once and just streamlines the process.”
While we’re still a long way from universal acceptance of digital IDs, each new state brings us one step closer to making the iPhone the only thing we’ll need to carry.
