Spain-based hashID has launched an app that reads the chip in an ID card or passport once via NFC and answers age requests with a yes or no, telling the requesting platform nothing else. The app is on Apple’s App Store and is free for private users.
hashID says the answer rests on what the issuing state wrote into the chip rather than on a face scan or an AI estimate. The platform receives no name, date of birth or photo. From version 1.0.1, due shortly after launch, the app will also check the issuing state’s signature against official trust lists. Users can sign up without an email address or phone number, according to the app’s store listing.
The app includes a wallet that receives, stores and presents digital credentials using OpenID4VCI, OpenID4VP, SD-JWT VC and ISO/IEC 18013-5. hashID can also issue credentials, for example for clubs and companies, and verify them. Its site lists OpenID Foundation certifications for the wallet, dated October 26, and for the issuer, dated November 3. The company says it has been verifying credentials from other wallets, including France Identité, in EU test environments for months, and that it demonstrated its age check at the EUDI Unfold conference in Nijmegen in October.
hashID combines those functions with hIDcom, an end-to-end encrypted messenger with forward secrecy. There is no public user directory, and contacts are created only through a mutual exchange that both sides accept. Version 1.0.1 is also due to add encrypted backups stored wherever the user chooses, never on hashID’s servers. The store listing describes further features, including venue age checks through hIDin and password-free sign-in through hIDlogin.
The app is developed by Desteba Productions S.L. in Crevillent, in Spain’s Alicante province. It arrives seven weeks before the December 24 deadline for EU member states to provide digital identity wallets, and after the European Commission presented a draft KIDS Act on September 17 that hashID says would require certified age verification for social networks.
“Europe is demanding age checks everywhere right now and getting mountains of ID copies in return. That doesn’t protect children, it produces the next data breach,” said founder and CEO Stephan Bergmann. “hashID answers exactly the question that is asked, and nothing more. What isn’t stored with us can’t be sold, stolen or demanded.”
Sources: hashID: release, hashID: certificates, App Store
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
