Macerkopf reports Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior has announced that it will soon be possible to scan German ID cards with an iPhone running iOS 13.
The news comes on the heels of announcements that iPhones will soon be able to scan the NFC chips used in Japanese ID cards and in British passports.
While the NFC reader in iPhones were originally locked down by Apple to only support its use in Apple Pay, the Cupertino firm recently announced that restriction would be lifted, allowing NFC-capable iPhones to read any NFC chip. Apps still need to be approved on a case-by-case basis by Apple.
The message Federal Ministry of the Interior states:
The Federal Ministry of the Interior, for construction and homeland welcomes this important step. This will soon allow users of Apple’s mobile devices to benefit from digital sovereign applications such as ID, ePass, and eVisum. As in person checks at international airports. Germany and many other states have been in contact with Apple for a long time.
Apple has now announced to open with the next operating system iOS 13 in the fall of 2019, the NFC interface. At the same time, the Federal Government’s AusweisApp2, which can be used with iPhones, should be made available for free download in the Apple Store, so that the online ID function can also be used with iPhones.
German citizens are quite privacy minded, so it will be interesting to see what the adoption rate of the voluntary program will be. As Bloomberg reported last year, cash remains popular in the country, while other countries continue to make electronic payments popular.
(Via 9to5Mac)