At Persona, our goal is to help future-proof your identity verification processes by staying on top of emerging industry standards and integrating with leading digital ID solutions. That’s why we're excited to announce that organizations that obtain Apple's entitlement will be able to accept mobile driver's licenses (mDLs) as a form of identification within Persona's verification flow.
How does digital ID verification work?
In order for individuals to add a mobile driver’s license to their Apple Wallet, they must first go through a validation process, which involves submitting images of their license to issuing state sources to corroborate PII and biometric details. Once their identity is confirmed, users can add their mDL to their digital wallet, where the information is encrypted and stored securely.
If you choose to accept Apple Wallet driver’s licenses as a form of identification and Persona detects a valid mDL on the user’s device, they’ll be asked if they want to submit a mobile driver’s license.
The user then needs to review and accept the mDL verification prompt, which outlines what data is being requested. To secure information and prevent unauthorized use, mDLs can require FaceID or a passcode.
Persona then decrypts the information following ISO 18013-5 standards, which dictate how to verify the integrity of the mDL data to make sure the information is authentic and not tampered with. You can then integrate mDL information into broader business workflows and rest assured that we safeguard customer data on our platform, which is compliant and certified via SOC 2 and ISO27001.
Benefits of mobile driver’s license verification
While digital identity verification is a lot easier than it used to be, offering mDL support benefits both end users and organizations in a few ways:
Maximize conversion, minimize friction
For end users
- No wallet, no problem: As the world becomes more digitized, more and more people are leaving their wallets at home. With mDL verification, users no longer need to fumble through their wallets to find their IDs to verify themselves, as the direct integration with Apple Wallet means they can submit their driver’s license without having to take a picture of their ID.
- Easier verification: While Persona has invested a ton of time and effort into providing live user guidance and auto-capture to reduce user-based image quality errors, sometimes good users still can’t get verified. The leading cause: poor image quality. By accepting Apple Wallet driver’s licenses, your users no longer need to worry about things like lighting conditions, obfuscated ID edges, or even camera quality.
For organizations
- Extraction accuracy: With mDLs, you no longer need to ask users to re-submit IDs due to suboptimal ID extraction or quality. We anticipate the first attempt success rate will increase since the vast majority of failures are due to image quality and mDLs are already fully validated against issuing sources.
- Custom verification experiences: With Persona’s new Dynamic Flow, you can serve different experiences to different users based on risk signals in real time, constantly adjusting the flow as users progress. For example, if a user has to perform Face ID to submit their mDL, you may not need to require a selfie verification, eliminating one more step in the verification process.
Increase privacy and security while reducing fraud
For end users
- More secure: Unlike photos of IDs, which can be leaked and reused, mDLs are encrypted and stored on devices, which greatly lowers the chance of identity theft.
- Data transparency: mDL verification gives users greater transparency around what PII is shared and how the data is stored. In fact, when users are going through a Persona verification flow, they can see what information will be collected and have the option to leave the flow if they do not want to share certain information.
- Extra protection: Before a state issuing authority will approve an mDL, users need to perform some form of hardware-based authentication such as FaceID, which mitigates unauthorized use of identity information.
For organizations
- Higher assurance: Because the information on each mobile driver’s license is validated against issuing DMV sources, accepting mobile driver’s licenses can give you higher assurance against fraudulent driver’s license submissions and tampered biometric information.
- End-to-end encryption: Because Persona follows ISO 18013-5 guidelines, you can rest assured that the validated data has not been tampered with at any point of the transmission.
Stay on top of emerging identity standards with Persona
The identity landscape is changing quickly, and mobile driver’s licenses are just the beginning of a long line of innovations that are sure to emerge in this space.
At Persona, we’re committed to providing all the building blocks you need to craft your ideal identity program, whether it uses traditional methods like documentary verifications or up-and-coming methods like integrations with digital wallets, the ability to verify NFC chips on passports or mDLs from states that accept them, or integrations with newer identity databases, such as eCBSV.
We’re excited to continue supporting all businesses as this identity space continues to evolve. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your business, please reach out — we’d love to chat.
