California DMV partners with biometric identity company for mobile driver’s license program

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has partnered with AuthenticID, a biometric identity company, to allow residents to verify their identities for the state’s mobile driver’s license program, the company said in an announcement Wednesday.

California’s mobile driver’s license program was initially launched by state’s DMV through a limited pilot program last year in the California DMV mobile app. Then in August, the state expanded it to all residents with integration of the IDs in Apple and Google wallets.

Technology from AuthenticID will allow residents interested in the digital offering to confirm their identities almost instantly online through face matching and liveness detection — a security method that can determine if a live person presenting an authentic biometric, such as a face or fingerprint, as opposed to a fake image or recording.

Currently, California mDLs are accepted at some airports, as well as at select convenience and retail stores across the state. So far, thirteen states offer mobile driver’s licenses, and at least five states — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland and Ohio — support integration with Apple Wallet, while several others have mobile ID programs in the works.

The work to build out California’s mobile ID program follows the DMV’s efforts to become a “mobile-first operation,” with the department in May announcing it will require some services like renewals to be completed online or at new self-serve kiosks located at DMV physical locations. But the shift to a mobile-first operation comes after a slate of problems faced by the state’s DMV in recent years, such as a botched roll-out issuing Real ID cards as a result of technical glitches and the incorrect registration of thousands of voters in 2018.

“The California DMV Wallet will continue to add public and private sector services to make Californian digital lives easier with an innovative, inclusive and privacy preserving digital credential,” Ajay Gupta, chief digital transformation officer at California DMV, added in the announcement.

AuthenticID provides its identity verification services to eight out of the nine major wireless providers in North America, two of the major credit bureaus, many of the largest financial institutions and several federal and state services across the country.

“We’re proud to partner with the State of California’s DMV to ensure users can safely and securely verify their identities,” Reed Taussig, CEO of AuthenticID, said in the announcement. “Our ongoing innovation delivers our customers the highest levels of security, privacy, and customer experience so that users can verify their identities effortlessly with the devices and technology they trust.”