A mobile driver’s license is a digital version of your plastic license that lives in an app or wallet on your smartphone, and more than twenty states and territories now issue one. You can use it to clear TSA at airports in participating states, and in some situations it shares less personal information than your physical card. No state has retired the plastic card yet, though, so you still need to carry it.
Which States Issue One
As of mid-2025, the TSA accepts mobile licenses at airport checkpoints from Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Puerto Rico, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.1Transportation Security Administration. Participating States and Eligible Digital IDs Several of those programs launched as recently as 2024, and more states are expected to join.
The platform varies. Some states issue their own standalone app; others deliver the credential through Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, Samsung Wallet, or a combination.1Transportation Security Administration. Participating States and Eligible Digital IDs You don’t choose freely — your state’s program decides which wallets are compatible, so check your motor vehicle agency’s site before downloading anything.
How to Set One Up
You need a valid, unexpired physical license and a reasonably current phone. Apple’s program generally requires an iPhone 8 or later running iOS 16.5 or newer; Android requirements vary by state but typically start around Android 9 with NFC hardware.2Apple. Present Your Driver’s License From Apple Wallet Depending on your state, you’ll either download the state’s dedicated app or add the credential inside your phone’s built-in wallet.
The flow is similar across programs. You scan the front and back of your physical license with your phone’s camera, and the software checks the card’s security features and matches the printed data against state records. Then comes a liveness check: the app has you take a selfie and may prompt you to smile, turn your head, or hold a pose until the phone vibrates. That step confirms a real person is holding the phone rather than someone propping up a photo.3Apple Support. Add Your Driver’s License to Apple Wallet
Once you submit the images, the state reviews everything. Approval often takes a few minutes, though some states may need a business day or two. When it clears, the digital license appears as a tile in the wallet or app, ready to use.
Using It at the Airport
REAL ID enforcement began on May 7, 2025, which changed what TSA can accept. Under the REAL ID framework, federal agencies including TSA can accept a mobile license only if the issuing state has received a temporary waiver under 6 CFR 37.7.4Transportation Security Administration. REAL ID Mobile Driver’s Licenses (mDLs) States apply to TSA, demonstrate that their programs meet the security and technical standards, and receive a certificate of waiver if approved.5Federal Register. Minimum Standards for Driver’s Licenses and Identification Cards Acceptable by Federal Agencies for Official Purposes; Waiver for Mobile Driver’s Licenses
One detail trips travelers up: your mDL must be built on a REAL ID-compliant physical license. If the underlying plastic card isn’t REAL ID-compliant, the digital version won’t work at TSA either.1Transportation Security Administration. Participating States and Eligible Digital IDs Even with a fully valid mobile credential, TSA still encourages carrying a physical ID as backup, because travelers without acceptable ID face additional screening and possible delays.
Using It at Stores
Mobile licenses are starting to appear at retailers that sell alcohol, tobacco, and other age-restricted products. Some states have approved verification apps that let a retailer scan your mDL directly from your phone without handling the device. The two phones communicate through an encrypted channel, and the retailer’s app receives only what the check requires, typically just your age and photo rather than your full address or license number.
Acceptance is voluntary. Most locations don’t have the scanning technology yet, and no federal law requires businesses to accept digital IDs for age verification. If you’re going somewhere that checks IDs, bring the plastic card.
The Privacy Advantage
This is where a mobile license genuinely beats the plastic card. When you hand a bartender your physical license, they see your full name, address, date of birth, license number, and any endorsements or restrictions. A mobile license built on the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard can share only the specific data fields the situation calls for.6International Organization for Standardization. ISO/IEC 18013-5:2021 – Personal Identification — ISO-Compliant Driving Licence — Part 5: Mobile Driving Licence (mDL) Application For an age-restricted purchase, the system can confirm you’re over 21 without revealing your home address or license number, and the verifier can still confirm the data is authentic and unaltered.7National Institute of Standards and Technology. Digital Identities – Mobile Driver’s License (mDL)
Security and Lost Phones
Your credential is protected by the secure enclave or hardware security module built into modern smartphones, which stores cryptographic keys in tamper-resistant hardware separated from the phone’s general operating system. Even if malware compromises the rest of the phone, the credential stays isolated.
Verification runs on a public key infrastructure managed by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. Its Digital Trust Service maintains a verified list of each state’s public signing keys, so a forged or tampered credential fails verification because the cryptographic signature won’t match.8AAMVA. Mobile Driver License Digital Trust Service
If your phone is lost or stolen, you can remotely deactivate the device through Apple’s Find My or Google’s Find My Device, which renders the stored credential inaccessible. Because the mDL is tied to your biometrics through the liveness check at setup, someone who finds the phone would still need to pass its biometric lock. Report the lost phone to your state’s motor vehicle agency as well so they can flag the digital credential on their end.
Why You Still Need the Plastic Card
The legal rules haven’t caught up with the technology. Most states still require drivers to carry a license in their “immediate possession” while operating a vehicle, and those statutes were written with a plastic card in mind. Only a handful of states have updated their vehicle codes to explicitly recognize a digital credential as satisfying the possession requirement. In the rest, showing an officer your phone during a traffic stop might not technically satisfy the statute, even if the officer personally accepts it.
Reader compatibility is uneven, too. Not every law enforcement agency has devices or apps that can read an mDL through the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard. An officer without compatible technology has to inspect the screen visually, which gives no way to confirm the credential is real rather than a screenshot or an altered image. A stop that could have ended with a quick license check might run longer instead.9National Institute of Standards and Technology. Steering Toward Mobile Driver’s Licenses
A dead battery is the other scenario. If your phone shuts off during a traffic stop, you effectively have no license to present. Until digital licenses are universally accepted and batteries never fail, keeping the plastic card in your wallet costs nothing.
Handing an Officer Your Phone
Showing a mobile license during a traffic stop puts a police officer in front of your unlocked phone, which is a situation the plastic card never created. In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court held that police generally cannot search the digital contents of a cell phone without a warrant, even after an arrest, recognizing that people have a high expectation of privacy in their phone’s contents and that a smartphone is fundamentally different from a wallet or a glove compartment.10Justia. Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014)
Well-designed mDL systems address the concern by limiting what appears on screen. When you present your license through a wallet app, the phone typically shows only the credential and blocks navigation to other apps. Some implementations use NFC so the officer’s reader pulls only the license data without the officer ever touching your phone. If an officer asks to hold your device, you can say you’d prefer to hold it yourself, though how that plays out depends on the officer and the circumstances.