Apple’s plan to make the iPhone a replacement for the physical wallet is accelerating on two parallel tracks. At the state level, West Virginia has just become the 12th U.S. state to add support for its mobile driver’s license (mDL) in Apple Wallet, a rollout conducted in partnership with Idemia.
At the federal level, Apple VP of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, Jennifer Bailey, confirmed at the Money20/20 conference that support for U.S. Passports in Apple Wallet is “coming soon”. This feature, first announced at WWDC in June, was delayed from the initial iOS 26 launch but is now reaffirmed for arrival later this year.
This reveals Apple’s “pincer movement” on digital identity. The state-by-state mDL rollout is a slow ground game requiring 50 separate negotiations. The passport feature is a top-down federal solution. It bypasses the states and will instantly make a digital ID available to millions of U.S. passport holders, bridging the gap left by the nearly 40 states lagging in mDL adoption.
The passport feature is also a strategic solution to the looming REAL ID compliance crisis. With many state-issued licenses still not compliant for domestic travel, the passport-in-Wallet provides a universal, federally compliant credential accepted at over 250 TSA checkpoints nationwide.
To build market trust for Wallet-as-ID, Bailey also released new fraud-prevention statistics for Apple Pay. She revealed that Apple Pay has stopped over $1 billion in fraud in the past year and is 60% to 90% more secure than traditional cards. This is a clear trust transference strategy: by proving its security with digital money, Apple is making the case for why it should be trusted with digital identity.
The expansion follows rapid adoption across multiple states, with jurisdictions like Iowa, Montana, and Illinois joining the digital ID ecosystem, while North Dakota and others prepare for upcoming launches.
Sources: 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, Apple
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
