Accepting the US Mobile Driver's License: Takeaways From Our Webinar With IDEMIA

Thirty-five seconds. That is how long it took to remotely verify a New York mobile driver's license in the demo we ran during last week's webinar with IDEMIA Public Security. The time covers the whole journey of clicking the button, clearing a bot check, authenticating with Face ID, consenting, and landing back on the original site.

On October 7, Trinsic co-founder and CEO Riley Hughes was joined by Rod Hugel, head of Smart Connect at IDEMIA Public Security, and Paul Grassi, principal digital identity architect at IDEMIA and a lead author of NIST SP 800-63-3. The topic was how a business can accept a US mDL remotely today, not in some future state. If you missed it, you can watch the full recording here. Below are the points that matter most for any business that verifies identity online.

The trust in an mDL starts at the DMV

Rod opened with the question every relying party eventually asks: why should I trust this? His answer is that the trust itself is not new. An mDL is anchored in the same DMV enrollment that has backed physical licenses for decades: breeder documents, biometrics, deduplication, and since REAL ID, an even stricter process.

What's new is the container. An mDL is not a picture of a license on a screen. It is a cryptographically signed credential with keys generated in the phone's secure element, bound to the device and to the holder's biometrics, so it can't be copied to another phone. And unlike a plastic card you hand over in full, it lets the holder share only what a verifier needs.

Paul walked through how IDEMIA provisions one remotely. The user scans their physical card, which gets authenticated. Then they take a selfie with liveness detection, and that selfie is matched against the image the DMV holds on file, not just the photo printed on the card. That last step matters more than it sounds. A common attack is a fake card carrying a real person's data and the fraudster's face. Match the selfie to the card and the fraudster passes. Match it to the system of record and they don't.

TSA proved the credential, online acceptance is the next phase

The TSA checkpoint is the most demanding identity environment in the country, with long lines, high stakes, and no tolerance for error. After years of pilots with TSA, NIST, and the DMVs, mDL acceptance is now live at more than 250 US airports.

That proof point is what makes online acceptance credible. The credential a business verifies remotely is the same one TSA trusts at the checkpoint, presented under a different standard. Paul laid out the stack:

• ISO/IEC 18013-5 for in-person presentation

• ISO/IEC 18013-7 for remote presentation

• OpenID for Verifiable Presentations (OpenID4VP), the protocol that carries the data

• The W3C Digital Credentials API, which lets a browser request a credential from a wallet, including when the user starts on a desktop and presents from their phone

Rod put the stakes plainly: "If we issue a credential and nobody can use it, then it's useless." Issuance without acceptance is a demo. Closing that gap is the reason this partnership exists.

Why IDEMIA and Trinsic are better together

IDEMIA is the leading issuer of mDLs in the US, powering state-branded Mobile ID apps. Trinsic is a single API for accepting digital IDs, covering mDLs alongside government and private digital IDs worldwide, with nearly 2 billion users in the network. When we announced the partnership in February, it brought IDEMIA's Mobile ID into the Identity Acceptance Network, starting with New York, Arkansas, Iowa, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

The webinar made the case for why both halves matter. Paul compared the two wallet models. A state multi-credential wallet lets the state control its own brand and add derived credentials, like a hunting license, a vehicle registration, or a professional license, each linked to the primary mDL. OEM wallets from Apple, Google, and Samsung have enormous reach, but the platform owner sets the rules. Riley added something many states don't realize: OEM wallets also decide which businesses get to accept their credentials, and some use cases never get approved.

The answer is not to pick one. A business that integrates only OEM wallets misses every resident who holds their mDL in a state app, and the reverse is just as true. The landscape also keeps moving, as wallets launch, wallets get retired, and states add new options. Trinsic absorbs that churn. We currently support four or five different ways of verifying a California mDL alone, because of how its standards and implementations have changed over time. You shouldn't have to track any of that.

What remote verification actually looks like

Riley demoed a remote verification of a New York Mobile ID, issued by IDEMIA, through Trinsic. The pattern will feel familiar to anyone who has clicked "Sign in with Google":

1. The user sees a New York Mobile ID button next to the usual document upload option.

2. They're redirected to the Mobile ID app and authenticate with Face ID.

3. The app shows exactly which attributes the business is requesting, under the business's own brand.

4. The user accepts and is sent back to the original site, verified.

One detail drew questions: the user can't uncheck individual attributes. That's deliberate. If a delivery app needs to confirm you're over 21 and you withhold your date of birth, the order fails. The privacy control belongs upstream, with a business that requests only what it needs. Trinsic lets businesses scope that request down, and the user decides whether to proceed.

The result is high assurance with low friction. The data is signed by the issuer and can't be tampered with, and nobody can generate a hundred AI-crafted variants of an mDL the way they can with a photo of a plastic card. In Trinsic's production data, users who verify with an mDL finish on average about five times faster than users who upload a physical ID.

Want to see this flow with your own branding and use case? Talk to our team.

Low adoption is a reason to start, not a reason to wait

Here is the number that makes some businesses hesitate. About 75% of Americans live in a state where they could get an mDL today, but only around 2.8% of the population actually holds one.

Riley's answer is that every new login and payment option starts this way. A "Pay with PayPal" button doesn't hurt conversion for people who don't use PayPal, it only helps the ones who do. An mDL button next to your document upload flow works the same way. Users without one take the path they take today, and users with one finish in seconds.

Adoption also follows acceptance. Louisiana and Arizona built large mDL user bases because businesses and agencies gave residents a reason to get one. Issuers need verifiers before they can grow, and verifiers want users before they integrate. Somebody has to go first.

Regulators just removed the biggest objection for banks

The most important development of the past month came up in Q&A. On September 8, FinCEN and the staffs of the Federal Reserve, FDIC, NCUA, and OCC published FAQs confirming that an unexpired, government-issued verifiable digital credential, including a state mDL, can count as government-issued identification under the Customer Identification Program rule. We broke down what those FAQs permit in a separate post.

Rod said that in the months since, he has seen the largest US banks lean in to accepting mDLs, making financial services the most active source of demand outside of TSA. Riley added the broader pattern from Trinsic's side: demand shows up anywhere an mDL can replace a photo of a plastic ID, from account opening and age verification to hotel check-in, account recovery, workforce onboarding, and background screening.

Start accepting US mDLs with Trinsic

The credential is proven, the standards are in production, and the regulators have spoken. What's left is integration, and that is the part we make simple.

With Trinsic, you get one API for IDEMIA's Mobile ID apps, OEM wallets, and the rest of the US mDL landscape, plus digital IDs in dozens of countries. We handle the standards, the wallet registrations, and the state-by-state changes, so you can add mDLs next to your existing document verification flow and keep that flow as the fallback for everyone else.

If you're ready to accept US mobile driver's licenses, contact us today and we'll help you get started.